Free daily Metro will launch 26 new local web sites, one for each municipality in the Stockholm region. 50-60 volunteers will be recruited to write short articles and take photos from their area. Sakari Pitkänen, editor-in-chief at Metro, expects to fill the void from larger Stockholm-based newspapers that are not reporting from the suburbs.
The “citizen reporters” will get paid depending on how high in the hierarchy an article will make it, the highest level being the “dead-tree version” of Metro.
Pitkänen tells Dagens Media that the new reporters will get a crash course in journalism and that he is not afraid of the quality because he hopes the collective will monitor itself.
The project will start recruiting next week and launch in the beginning of May.
Tags: metro, citizen journalism, ohmynews.