Meporter for iOS calls the reporter in you

In a world of hacked Fox News Twitter accounts falsely declaring Barack Obama's death, you might have reasonable doubts about professional journalism. The web and mobile revolution however are definitely changing the way news gets reported – just look at the skyrocketing growth of publications like the Huffington Post based on citizen journalism and you get the picture. Meporter for iOS fits exactly in this space – it's a location-based mobile news app allowing you to report live about everything from politics to weather, sports and entertainment in writing, photos and videos.

The app requires you to first register by filling in your credentials, and from there on you get a very rich streamlined interface. You have five tabs: Map, Newswire, Post, Friends and Profile. The Map feature is what makes Meporter unique as you get to see all local news anchored to the place of reporting. You can only comment to the ones in your vicinity, but viewing news from other parts of the world is also possible. The second tab, Newswire, lists either all local news or news from friends, while the Friends tab allows you to search and add friends, as well as view their articles. Finally, the Profile tab summarizes everything about you, the reporter, with a short bio along with all posted stories and favorite news.

Posting news articles is as simple as typing in the title along with the story text and selecting a category, while attaching photos or videos is optional. You can also choose to propel your news to Facebook and/or Twitter. If you opt not to share the news article on social networks, then the news article will only be discoverable within the app and for registered users on the Meporter website. 

As we mentioned, Meporter doubles as a unique news reader – it shows you all local news, which you can easily filter by categories, but you can also choose to view stories only from your friends. Here's where the whole double-edged nature of citizen journalism truly shows: on one hand you get instant reporting which is not altered by someone's interests, but on the other the lack of an editor often means poor or irrelevant content gets posted. Meporter tries to control this through “press passes,” which are something you earn for posting stories (you can even redeem those passes later) and something that ultimately grants you more exposure and credibility.

Conclusion:

Should you try Meporter? The mobile newsdesk/news reader is free on the App Store, but it's worth a look for another reason – it grants you the freedom of not only reading instant citizen reports, but also participating by being the reporter, writing news articles, sharing them with others and also deciding what's truly important for you – Barack Obama's latest policies, the National Donut Day or that yard sale going on next door. It also manages to combine all of those in a cool, non-contradictory way, but at the same time, though, while posting is made extremely easy and convenient, the news is delivered to only a small number of users resulting in little exposure. That's due to the fact the app has just been launched and it lacks proper community, but with an Android and BlackBerry apps on their way, we can hope to see more people participating soon.

 

Download Meporter for iOS (iTunes link)