No matter where you sit, the nearest newsroom is within a click.

Starting Monday, that is, when IAmNews.com opens the initial sections of its much-anticipated online newsroom. The full version will be available in April.

A private version of this platform launched in September, 2008, when creator Nir Ofir won the TechCrunch50 People’s Choice Award and prompted widespread interest in his project.

After its initial splash, though, the vision behind IAmNews shifted. The platform was initially tailored specifically to facilitate the newsgathering process. But now it will address a more complicated problem, that of reporters being forced to work more often on a freelance basis.

“At first we wanted to flatten the world of news creation by creating some kind of a platform that allows professionals or semi-pro or amateurs to do news together,” Ofir says.

The goal was to allow editors in Tel Aviv, for example, to easily find and hire journalists in, say, Amsterdam. The credibility of these journalists and content creators would be signified on the site by an in-network rating system. Once content was created it would be further licensed and distributed by IAmNews ala a wire service.

“This was a business model which we didn’t really explore yet,” says Ofir, 33.

En route to realizing these ideas, Ofir found himself increasingly

in touch with journalists laid off by cost-conscious managers. So he decided to use the site as more of a vehicle to narrow the world between reporters and editors.

“Our mission is to create the most efficient space for both sides to work together and discover each other,” Ofir says. “We think that the need is so, so big. Try to look up who is reporting in Peru and South Africa. Try to find them in Google. There is no one place that is doing a great job in connecting publishers and contributors and basically we think that this need is one to be solved.”

As Ofir, from Israel, is quoted around the ‘Net saying IAmNews is a platform, not a destination site. That’s what sets it apart from citizen journalism sites like OhMyNews or AllVoices.

IAmNews does not aim to wed content creators to a platform on which they can publish their words or images. Rather, it’s a hybrid between a job board and a discussion platform geared to enable collaboration during the newsgathering process.

It will make money in the same way photography agencies do: Taking a percentage of the transactions between editors and reporters. Ofir, who took up the IamNews idea in June, 2008, says this fee will be less than 30 percent.

To that end, contributors registered at IamNews will be able to use the site as a stand from which to sell their wares.

“We will protect the rights to photos and videos,” Ofir says. “We will try to help them resell their content through our platform, actively looking for distribution platforms… Viable content, interesting content posted on IAmNews will be distributed by other channels than IAmNews.”

Journalists may visit now to create profiles, but the “full marketplace” will not open until April.

 

Published: February 27, 2009