Vintage Wolf

I spotted a post on the CNN.com Behind the Scenes blog by Lila King that talked about CNN's newest site iReport.com:

At CNN we argue a lot about what’s news. The results of those daily discussions, of course, are displayed in bold headlines on the CNN.com home page or in stories on our cable network shows.

But over on our new site, iReport.com, we’re trying something different.

iReport.com is a place where anyone with a story to share is invited to upload it, and anyone else is welcome to rate it, share it or comment on it. The big, bold headlines on that site are the stories that provoke the most heated conversations or score the highest ratings.

On iReport.com, you determine what’s news. And stories float to the top of the iReport.com homepage – on what we’re calling the “newsiest” list — based on community activity. The idea is that there’s news value in what people read, talk about and send to their friends.

iReport.com has only been live for a few short weeks, but already the “newsiest” list has turned up some fascinating stories, and not exactly what you might find on your favorite traditional news site:

• An injured dolphin helps amputees adjust to new realities

• The Chicago River turns green in a time-lapse video from St. Patrick’s Day in downtown Chicago

• A mother of a 19-year-old U.S. Marine who’s about to go to Iraq says she’s scared, and commenters jump in to offer support

• Hundreds of plastic eggs roll off a flying helicopter to start a massive Easter hunt in Oklahoma City

• A man recalls the day he heard Martin Luther King was shot, and how his neighbors reacted

So what do you think? Are they newsworthy? Head over to iReport.com today to cast your own vote for what counts as news. Upload a story, rate someone else’s, join the conversation. Hope to see you there.

I've visited the site a few times since it first went live- the first time there I found a series of daily posts featuring what that person was having for lunch. I tend to think of the site as "news in the raw".

On tonight's visit to iReport.com, I found this vintage report from Wolf Blitzer:

Notice the high tech computer sitting behind him? Or the electric typewriter that looks like it may have been repurposed as an IN box? Just makes you wonder how they reported news before Blackberry's.

John King filled in for Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room Monday afternoon and Jack Cafferty was determined to give him a hard time.

Christiane Amanpour will be speaking at the University of Scranton this week. Here's a snippet from the press release:

Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent, who has reported on crises in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Rwanda and the Balkans, will be in Scranton this spring to discuss “America and the World” in a joint presentation with her husband, James Rubin. They will speak at the T. Linus Hoban Memorial Forum at The University of Scranton on April 3, at 7 p.m. in the fourth floor ballroom of the Patrick and Margaret DeNaples Center. The Lackawanna Bar Association has partnered with The University of Scranton to present the forum.

“Anyone who has the opportunity of sharing an evening with our speakers, as they recount their personal experiences with peoples and officials from the Balkans to the Middle East, will come away with a better understanding of the complexities faced not only by the United States, but by the entire world, as our struggle for peace continues,” said Michael Cowley, Esq., member of the Lackawanna Bar Association, and chairman of its Hoban Forum Committee. “This promises to be a compelling, enriching and thought provoking event.”

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