When some of its local television stations began soliciting user generated stories, photos and videos, executives with Pappas Telecasting braced themselves for a flood of pictures of people's children.

But something else happened, said Rosemary Danon, the broadcasting company's vice president of online and new media. Photos and other content posted through the Community Correspondent program were overwhelmingly about the place people live, and the institutions and activities that define it.

The program is a nod to the growing popularity of the homegrown video site YouTube.com and the emergence of other forms of user-generated community news. In television markets with a broad geographic reach, the community correspondents also offer greater representation for small, far-flung towns that the station's professional reporters rarely reached.

"We try to take very seriously the fact that the newscasts really belong to the viewers," Danon said. "We build a newscast to serve the community and we build a newscast based on what their interests are. So it gives us a better understanding of what's going on in the community."

Rosemary Danon, Vice President, Online and New Media,
Pappas Telecasting Companies (see bio)

When Pappas Telecasting launched its Community Correspondent program in spring 2006, Rosemary Danon said she wanted it to be a simple process that would encourage viewers to submit a range of compelling content, without being intimidated by the technology or the medium.

To that end, the program is guided by straightforward rules:

• Registration is required, but once users have uploaded their content, it is published instantly to the local station's web site, without editing.
  
• A code of honor keeps objectionable material off the web site.
  
• Each day's posts are archived as a 24-hour feed on the station web site. The most widely viewed or commented on post is incorporated into each night's broadcast.

After the Community Correspondent program debuted in Lincoln, Neb., in June 2006, viewers polled in a focus group told station executives they were rushing home to watch the news. For the July rating period, the station's primetime broadcast went up a full rating point, Danon said.

"A lot of people sort of still see the online as a threat," Danon said. "So that was a very good reaffirmance that going on multi-platforms and having this sort of connectivity is an enhancement to all your content, not just taking away from it."

Jump to other panel summaries:

•  Panel 1: New Kinds of Hyperlocal Start-ups
•  Panel 2: Solo-jos with Community Impact
•  Panel 3: Mainstream Media: Past Lessons, Future Vision
•  Panel 4: Building Sustainability
•  Panel 5: Citizen Television Correspondents
•  First Release: Highlights of Phase I,
      Ford-funded study of citizen media projects