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The big media news of the day, or of the month for that matter, has been the acquisition of Newsvine.com by MSNBC. Newsvine is a community-powered news website that is a combination of mainstream media - from the likes of Associated Press and ESPN - and user submitted content. It's what many have been calling the future of media.

And the future is coming quicker than what some may have thought. MSNBC.com is generally in the top three news sites, but even this powerhouse realizes the need for incorporating community features into their website.

That's where Newsvine comes in. Not only are users able to submit links of articles from other websites, vote and comment on articles - but each user is also a citizen journalist - because they're able to submit fully unmoderated articles that they write themselves.

According to MSNBC:

"[the site] was racing to foster a community among its readers and to exploit the power of unmoderated user commentary and ranking of the news. " and Newsvine was the "perfect fit."

Newsvine has been around for only about 1.5 years and it doing well, but is generally dwarfed in traffic stats by others like Digg.com, Reddit and Propeller. But, the unique integration of mainstream and user-generated content make it a great fit for a company like MSNBC.

More from the article:

"But the site has generated significant buzz since its launch in March 2006 because of its inventive merger of mainstream reporting from The Associated Press and ESPN; the contributions of individual users, who are paid for their writing; and the social media model of user-driven ranking of the news."

"That buzz, and the technology behind it, are what msnbc.com is buying. While msnbc.com has long ranked among the three most popular news sites on the Web, it has been late to the game in expanding its offerings in user participation and non-professional reporting."

According to reports, Newsvine will begin integrating MSNBC content on its site very shortly, and likewise, MSNBC will start integrating content from Newsvine.

"Msnbc.com will integrate Newsvine mainly at the story level, Tillinghast said, promoting Newsvine links "on stories that might stimulate a lot of community activity," such as political articles."

What does that mean? Well, quite simple - user-generated content, citizen journalists...will now have a home on one of the largest news websites on the web.

If that's not a dramatic endorsement of the power of citizen journalism, I don't know what is!

Learn more about this author, James Stone.
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