New App Lets Anyone Shoot and Send News to Stations in Moments So No Story Goes Untold

Have you ever been walking down the street and happened upon something totally unusual and out-of-the-ordinary? Did you think, “If only I had the number for my local news producer”? I have good news for you, then: If you download Fresco, you can be your own news producer and have a direct link to your station. Film whatever is happening, send it along, and make money. With Fresco, you can take citizen journalism to the next level by receiving assignments straight from your station and heading out, phone in hand, to capture them for a wider audience.

One of the first stations to partner with Fresco was Philadelphia’s Fox 29. Let their reporter Chris O’Connell show you more:

Fox Television Stations SVP of News Operations, Sharri Berg, said, “We’ve been trying to do this the right way for years, but all that was missing were some ambitious 20-somethings and a simple app.”

Users can submit photos and videos from a scene and if a Fox station selects the photos, that’s $20 in the pocket of the Fresco user. If the Fox station goes with a video, the user gets $50.

We reached out to Wilma Caballero, a Fresco user from North Carolina who told us that the best part of the app is the feeling of happiness that comes from having a photo or video selected for use by her local station. She told Mediaite that using Fresco makes her feel like part of a family and that she looks forward to watching the app grow and become even more sophisticated. The stay-at-home mother of three has already made over $3,000 from her 416 submissions and 60 completed assignments.

She spoke to Fox 46, too. Watch:

She told Mediaite that the only downside to using the app is the fact that it has the tendency to crash with cell service is bad. I would like to add that it is not yet available for Android devices, so for now, it’s up to all you iPhone users to get out there and get the story.

That’s exactly what Fresco’s CEO John Mayer wants you to do, too. He said this:

We built Fresco to harness the real power of citizen journalism. As news consumers, we’re often only given one particular angle to a story because there’s usually only one camera or one reporter on the scene. But with Fresco, there can be multiple witnesses who are recording their own perspective, which adds a new dimension to how stories are presented.

What do you think? Are you going to download it?

[image via screengrab]

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