CNN has launched a service called CNN Exchange that solicits video, photos and eyewitness accounts for stories from all of us Average Joe (Joanne?) citizens and then they will filter it and use what they feel is appropriate for their coverage.  Isn’t it kind of surprising that this has already been done by one of the major networks?  I mean it costs them next to nothing and it promises to give them exponentially more raw material to work with.

I say it costs them next to nothing because they will have to dedicate staff time to this, and building out the system had to cost them something, but compared to what it would cost them to hire enough people to try and replicate the amount of raw material they’ll be getting from camera-phone toting Anderson Cooper or Christiane Amanpour wannabes it is a negligible amount.  And in their defense the evolution of inexpensive camera phones and the realization that the public doesn’t demand perfect video (i.e. that crappy MPEG footage from Mary Sue’s camera phone is better than nothing) are all fairly recent developments.  So kudos to CNN for getting this going.