iReport.com: making journalism degrees useless?

Most have you have probably already seen this, as I realize that four months is an eternity in the world of converged media, but earlier this year CNN launched their iReport.com site. It's the journalistic equivalent of YouTube, where users can upload their own clips and articles about anything they want to -- provided that, in theory, it's journalistically sound.

MediaWeek ran an interesting article in February about the launch of the site. The article notes that iReports have become increasingly popular, and reminds readers that coverage of recent events such as the Virginia Tech shootings and last year's wildfires in California came largely from user-generated video sent to newsrooms.

A particularly interesting feature of the site is the navigation bar including categories of iReports: latest, highest rated, most viewed, most shared, on CNN, and newsiest. Not only do users who upload news items have their work in the online community for feedback, but CNN.com actually uses some articles on their site and tags the ones that have been lifted from iReport.

iReport's "About" page starts off with an important caveat: "The views and content on this site are solely those of the iReport.com contributors. CNN makes no guarantees about the content or the coverage on iReport.com!" Notably, none of the content on the site is pre-screened. Everything is published until fellow users flag questionable content for review.

Articles under the "Highest Rated" tab generally do have genuine news content, with the top story being a photo gallery covering the Olympic torch protests. But then you also get stories like this one under the "Most Viewed" tab, about a husband's (kind of mean) April Fools joke on his wife.

User-generated content sites always have a range of uploaded content, from the interesting and germane to the downright out there. But what happens when you call all of those uploads news?

Have any of you submitted user-generated news content to this or another Web site? What do you think about this means of engaging readership, making them authors as well as users? There are obvious ramifications for what it means to be a journalist -- iReport's only standard is that users be at least 13 years old to upload content on the site. (Which makes me feel just great about that expensive diploma I'll be getting in a month.)

It seems to me that iReport may have a useful purpose for niche news -- it is a good place to see what the major networks aren't covering. Much like YouTube, where users often go to find videos that are not accessible elsewhere, iReport can be a good source for off-the-beaten-path news coverage. And this, seemingly is what CNN is capitalizing on.