Citizen journalism takes more uptime on hot news, remember London bombings? The first images were shot by mobile camera, and today the first reports of Mumbai bombing came from citizen journalism via twitter and images on flickr.

So Aljazeera launching of Sharek (an Arabic word which means participate) is smart way to get breaking news and exclusive content for the channel from people who were on site. But those people have to know Arabic as for the time being Sharek is only in Arabic. 

Aljazeera’s Sharek is part of the new redesign of Aljazeera Arabic homepage, which is half way to full customization of Aljazeera’s news.

With Sharek users can upload news videos and/or pic through the web site, or send it via mobile phone or email to sharek@aljazeera.net. Where Aljazeera may publish it on the site or on TV.

Citizen journalism has been around for years now, in the Arab world Maktoob has a section in its news website that allows anyone to publish news. International news station CNN has iReporter , but unlike both of them Sharik uploaded content is handpicked by Aljazeera’s editors to make sure the story is true before it is published, which is a good policy to keep real news from lies. As One of iReporter’s user once published that the CEO of Apple has a cancer which led to depreciation of Apple’s stock value, and put CNN in an embarrassing situation.

Maktoob’s news is full of non news worthy content, but its use of citizen journalism has been kind of successful in its sport channel.( see Editor’s note on the comparison with Wikeez here.)

The first company to use Citizen journalism years ago was the south Korean company OhmyNews , another company is NowPublic the Canadian company that bought Trumors from Guy Kawasaki. 

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