CNN recently laid off at least 50 staff, including several photojournalists, in favor of affiliate contributions and iReport – CNN’s user-generated content department which does not pay users for their submissions. To many inside the industry and out, the move seemed based on flawed reasoning that might best be summarized by Stephen Colbert’s quip on the subject: “Why buy the cow when you can have it shakily videotape its own milk for free?”
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CNN attempts to mitigate the predictably chaotic and non sequitur submissions from its almost 1 million registered users by offering online journalism tutorials (shown above), but only 7% of iReport content is vetted for wider use by the organization. Critics are skeptical these educational efforts are enough to turn iReport into a dependably quality product.