CNN is creating a citizen video site. They are looking specifically for regional video.

This, of course, puts CNN in more direct competition for local news.

Local news sites need to be more aggressive about soliciting citizen contributions. Submission should be easy, integrated with the primary news site, and allow for unfiltered contributions (editors, of course, decide what gets promoted to more prominent display, and inappropriate submissions are deleted — but users shouldn’t need to wait on an editor to see their submission on the site. This only serves to discourage submissions.

Such a strategy, I think, will help with lagging audience growth.