The Huffington Post announced today that it is partnering with Ustream to give its readers access to live coverage of breaking news. Ustream, a live video streaming and sharing platform, has become a popular tool for citizen journalists since it was founded in 2007.
In a press release, Brad Hunstable, CEO and co-founder of Ustream said the partnership will give users access to a “raw and unedited perspective of diverse voices on the world’s most important events.”
“Citizen journalism is increasingly democratizing the internet with live Ustream news events playing an important role,” he said. “Our partnership with Huffington Post will further push forward this trend and our mission to enable anyone, anywhere to share their stories.”
Citizen journalism has come to the forefront recently with tools websites such as Allvoices and GroundReport. CNN iReport also allows the news group to feature live coverage of everything from the recent outbreak of wildfires in the western U.S. by local inhabitants to the Occupy Wall Street by participants and onlookers.
The pair is also calling for citizen journalists to apply for their “Off the Bus 2012” campaign. Huffington Post and Ustream will select one winner from the nominees to cover the 2012 political conventions in Tampa and Charlotte.
“We launched Off The Bus in 2007 to go beyond the one-dimensional horse-race aspect of election coverage and actually respond to the widespread dissatisfaction about the way campaigns are covered,” said Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, emphasizing their “commitment to holding politicians accountable and telling the stories that need to be told.”
Mr. Hunstable and Ms. Huffington will officially announce the partnership in a live press event at 3:30 p.m. (EST) on Ustream.tv/huffingtonpost. The announcement will be followed by a presentation from Ustream citizen journalist Luke “We Are Change” Rudkowski.
