If There Is Crazy Video, Does That Mean It's News?

There was a brawl in Old City last weekend when the bars closed. The video above was captured by a random person.

Is this news?

Several news outlets did stories about the brawl, including 6ABC, CBS3, the Daily News and Fox29.

What qualifies this as news? Is it a matter of having the dramatic video? Is it because people will see the raw video and talk about it? Is this an unusual event, and therefore newsworthy?

Or is this a non-story?

Can The Public Really Help The Newsmakers?

A NEWSPAPER IN THE UK is now posting their story budget for the next day's paper, hoping that readers will see the story list and contribute to it.

Is this a good idea?

"What if readers were able to help newsdesks work out which stories were worth investing precious reporting resources in?" the national news editor of The Guardian wrote yesterday. "What if all those experts who delight in telling us what's wrong with our stories after they've been published could be enlisted into giving us more clues beforehand? What if the process of working out what to investigate actually becomes part of the news itself?"

Is this a bright move, inviting citizens to become active participants in journalism? Or is this a gimmick?

Is this a ploy to get citizens to do the actual legwork that journalists used to do?

The story list began running today. Check it out here.