Chyron Partners With Cell Journalist for UGC

In a move designed to make it much easier for stations to put more user-generated content (UGC) on the air, Chyron has integrated its CAMIO graphics asset management server with the Web-based Cell Journalist application.

Cell Journalist allows users of mobile devices to upload, view, and share images and videos with a news station in seconds. With the integration of Chyron's CAMIO and Cell Journalist, a producer working in AP's ENPS news production system can locate uploaded stills and video hosted by Cell Journalist and then simply drag and drop them into a Chyron template and into the newsroom rundown.

The ability to quickly get UGC on-air would be particularly valuable during live breaking news and severe weather coverage when viewers are sending in videos and photos from places not accessibe by news crews or before a stations crew can capture can reach the scene of the events.

Broadcast clients using Cell Journalist include Cox, Scripps, Raycom, Belo, Barrington, ABC and Fox.

"In the past, an integration of this sophistication would have been costly both in terms of development time and money," said Jim Martinolich, VP of integration technology at Chyron. "Now, however, we have been able to leverage MOS Redirection, part of the open-standard MOS communications protocol, to simplify the sharing of content among systems. In doing so, we make it easy for producers to access unique or timely user-generated content through the same ENPS interface they use to create their news stories. This is a simple solution with a huge benefit -- namely, a more relevant and visually rich news product, without added workflow complexity."

In a statement, Mike Palmer, director of design and integration strategy for AP ENPS also noted that "this is an excellent example of how MOS and Open Standards can be used to build a completely transparent bridge from a cloud media source to a local production channel. Chyron and Cell Journalist have remarkably simplified the journalist's job by hiding the complex operations normally required to manually download, transcode, and copy media from one source to another."