Inviting the public to turn on their cameras is the easy part. I think creating a designated “home” for these stories the general population can discover and access easily is going to be the real challenge.

FIrst off, there is so much “noise” on YouTube it makes finding real “gems” a difficult task.

While having these stories available on YouTube would have been a nice addition, I imagine there are a lot of eyeballs like mine that do not spend any time there, simply because of the “noise.” We wouldn’t notice if they were there or not.

Creating a new “home” whose sole mission is to share historical stories like Burns proposes will be, IMHO, the quantum leap in the land of “story 2.0.” Make it topic specific…easy to watch…easy to share.

Too bad Burns couldn’t create such a home himself.

But here is what I wonder about, and I say in advance that it is a concern I will probably have to get over in the era of networked, citizen-based content produced everywhere from backyards to garages to white hoyse press conferences.

It’s that I can’t stop being a little skeptical every time I hear a clarion call from a successful media producer that all the citizens (I read “little people”) should start gathering content as part of some grand, noble civic project.

I see a lot of grand, noble civic projects that are nothing more than get me some free content so I can make some money.

After VA Tech, I’ll never the networks begging for a flowering of civic journalism and asking for cell phone camera or other video. Yet what they wanted — in their instant conversion to the citizen-based impulse — was a money-shot of some student bleeding or falling out of a window or something like it.

So forgive me if I am at least skeptical when Burns wants citizens to start making video. I mean, I think we all shoul be doing what he suggests.

But i can’t avoid doing what Mark Felt once told Woodstein to do: “Follow the money.”

Meanwhile, PBS has also developed a telephone interface allowing folks to call in their stories, record a voicemail, and have it available for the public via various pbs station websites. The tool is still being tweaked, but a few stations like KECT and WETA are already deploying it. (full disclosure – I’ve been helping PBS teach local stations about user-generated content in regards to the phone interface.)

Who’s to say that YouTube isn’t controlling? It’s not like it’s the Creative Commons-blessed.

The LoC answers this directly: “By donating hard copies of materials, you create a physical archival collection that will become a permanent part of the Library of Congress.”

StoryCorps is fabulous, but I challenge YouTube (or any of its devotees) to generate as cohesive a series as has appeared on NPR. There’s no YouTube category for anything resembling “personal narrative as art.”