This is like iStockPhoto crossed with Slashdot. You'd need to market aggressively to people like Reuters and the Associated Press.

I think people are more likely to just upload to YouTube though. Perhaps this is something that could be done in association with them?

I unknowingly submitted a similar idea (video mobile to newsdesk). In that idea I suggested that the website promote video mobile content the same way blogburst promotes blog content. I reckon there is plenty of mileage in this idea. Hope it gets voted up cause mine is getting voted down.
Good luck

I think this is a really good idea. YouTube has made it obvious that people are willing to spend a great deal of time looking at bad video.

For a business model, you might consider something similar to thisisby.us (http://www.thisisby.us/) where writers post content and get paid a percentage of site revenue based on the hits they generate. The revenue comes from advertising rather than user subscriptions, which I think is important in order to build audience. I think a user subscription or pay-per-view would be a deal-breaker in the current environment. Of course, the ability to negotiate deals with local and national media and kick some of that back to the submitter could be a huge revenue source and a great incentive to submitters.

hmmm...after a year of idleness and circle of CH "evolution' its nice this idea was revived now... and this actually is more doable now than a year ago! =)

"and for a very small price the public can view it"

People don't really like to pay for their news. It would be too easy to take the clip and re-upload it to YouTube or some free service. I think there's plenty of incentive (social if not monetary) to record anything interesting on a cellphone or video camera. No more infrastructure needs to be built to help disseminate such footage.

How will people viewing the videos know what's worth watching? Will they pay for a subscription or per video? If per video, how will you give them a preview so that they know they want to buy the clip? Many of the clips will already be very short, and some sort of preview will be necessary as otherwise people will quickly get frustrated by videos of things that aren't quite as newsworthy as they'd hoped.

Ridiculous to expect ppl to buy the video, maybe stick an ad in the begining of the video.

Check out ICaught , I think you will find that they have done a credible job of this.

Checkout the scoopt model (http://www.scoopt.com/) they broker deals between the originator of the pics / video and the media buyers.

My local news network is actually doing just this. Seems like it's already been done.

This is already being done in India.

somethin similar to podcast! n you tube! like it! have planned the same for my idea too.. if it gets goin!

iReports and Newstome on CNN are also experiementing with this model. Its a good idea and I'm sure all the news organizations are thinking about this.

This has been done in the Netherlands. It's something called Skoop or something like that (Scoop mispelled, think Web 2.0).

I am not sure about this.

I wouldn't pay to access your site, sorry, I don't pay for information from the internet.

I agree with ccozad. And I think a lot of people will agree with us. But the idea is ok.

another site similar to http://www.scoopt.com is http://www.spymedia.com