ME online editor Stuart O'Brien on mobile phones, citizen journalism and the most important to-do list in the world...
I wonder what Barack Obama's 'to do' list looks like? No doubt it's pretty long: Resolve global recession, sort out Iraq, reduce national debt, buy 3 pints of milk.Well, it's about to get a little longer, with US broadcaster CBS encouraging viewers to record videos and photos using their phones, detailing the issues Obama needs to tackle, before sending them in to its newsroom.
Clips will be posted to the CBSNews website and some will even make it onto a live Presidential Inauguration broadcast.
Ultimately its another mobile facet of citizen journalism, something CBS has been quietly building since launching its CBSeyemobile.com site almost a year ago. It's certainly not the only one though - CNN has iReport and the BBC recently said it would be placing its UGC team "in the heart of its newsroom".
That said, in a blog post earlier this month Peter Horrocks, the head of BBC Newsroom, also said that less than one per cent of the Corporation's daily online news audience (five million uniques) takes the time to submit feedback via any medium, let alone through a mobile phone.
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The interesting thing about the CBS inauguration initiative though is that it's using the UGC clips in an attempt to set the agenda - certainly a step up from encouraging viewers to send in grainy pics from an event that's already happened. Again, this is something Horrocks says the BBC is looking to develop too.
No doubt so are many other newsrooms around the world. It probably won't be long before governments start encouraging to citizens to submit their views direct using phones as part of an effort to appear more 'in touch' - Downing Street already accepts YouTube messages to which PM Gordon Brown periodically replies.
All we need now is a Downing Street iPhone app. Imagine that - daily updates direct from the man himself while people are on their way to work. The message would probably be "don't panic".
