Finnish Site Embraces UGC

A citizen media website in Finland is using articles and photos submitted by readers to provide content for its hyperlocal weekly print editions.

Vartti.fi claims that its affiliated print issues comprise approximately 20% of user-generated content which has been uploaded to its website, reports Journalism.co.uk.

Launched last month, the pro-am journalism website managed by Sanoma Digital has upped its profile with the publication of one of the first photographs from the recent school shooting in Tuusula.

The picture was submitted to Vartti by a citizen journalist who received an undisclosed sum.

“With the Jokela High School shooting we had one of the first pictures in Finland [from the scene] which was taken on a mobile phone, we then sold it on to publications in Norway and Sweden,” said Janne Kaijarvi, Vartti’s editor-in-chief.

Kaijarvi added that the website is still in the experimental stage: “By the end of next year the site might be totally different from what it is like now as we develop more and more user-generated content.”