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There used to be something here that couldn't be migrated - please contact us at info@journalism.co.uk if you'd like to see this updated! Nyouse.com , a Twitter-based system aimed at getting news tips to journalists, has been officially launched today.

Pronounced 'news', it requires Twitter users to label updates detailing 'unreported stories, ignored scandals or whistles that need blowing' with the tag \#nyouse .

These tagged updates are feed to a page using service SocialPlume , which automatically aggregates 'Tweets'. Journalists can subscribe to the tag via an RSS feed or visit the SocialPlume page to pick up stories that no-one else is covering.

"What I'm trying to set up is a communication channel for ordinary people to alert the press," founder Leif Kendall , a UK-based copywriter , told Journalism.co.uk.

"I never understood how news was decided and how journalists chose stories - I always thought there could be a better way for people to alert journalists to stories."

When a non-journalist wants to get a story heard it is difficult, he said. Stories can be pitched to a local journalist, but if that one journalist does not take interest, it 'stops and dies there', he added.

With a communication tool like Nyouse, the pitching process is opened up for multiple journalists in different types of newsrooms to pick it up, without the citizen having to tout the story to other sources.

Kendall has paired up with Jonathan Markwell, a Brighton-based web developer for Inuda , who is behind the SocialPlume system. It is hoped the application will eventually be extended to work with other social networking applications in addition to Twitter.

Kendall will deter spammers by moderating the site and using a 'hide' function. Anything that is not 'news' will be hidden from view: "Corporate advertising, anything like that I'll be weeding out," he said.

On the whole, the newsworthiness of a tweet will be up to the journalists using the service, he said. If a company has an announcement that could be of genuine interest to journalists that will be allowed, but marketing and sales messages will be blocked, he explained.

Nyouse is not replicating Twitter's existing use, he said, answering a question raised via Twitter . While 'a message on Twitter might be read by millions of people', as stated in Nyouse's FAQ , there's is no guarantee a news tip will be seen by a relevant journalist.

"But, if you're like most of us and have hundreds or even thousands of followers, your audience is actually very limited. Nyouse is a system for identifying news items that you want professional journalists to pick up," the post reads.

Kendall is hoping the idea will be picked up in one location - he is currently focusing on Brighton - and then spread more widely.

The FAQ on the Nyouse blog is clear: "Nyouse is not a news channel. It's a communication channel for people to reach journalists with news."

"It really takes two groups of people to understand the process and use it," said Kendall.

The project is driven by ideological rather than commercial purposes, but there is potential to integrate advertising into the site, Kendall added.

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Written by
Judith Townend

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