The Associated Press is adding user-generated social content (verified, of course) into its wire services » Nieman Journalism Lab

A new tool from the Associated Press will now allow users of its service to pull in topical and verified content shared by users on social media such as photos and videos around breaking news. Using the web interface provided by social media platform manager SAM (AP owns a stake in SAM and has been using it since 2015), AP Social Newswire lets AP clients look through social content that is being curated and vetted by AP editors in real-time.

From the AP:

View multiple feeds of content — from global to local — and monitor the vetting process in real-time through the notes and tags and that we apply to each asset (such as “authenticated” or “debunked”). All photos and videos are delivered in a digital-friendly format giving you the ability to seamlessly integrate UGC into your stories through embed codes.

In the realm of offering other news organizations user-generated content, AP is later to the game; services like Storyful, a dominant clearinghouse of sorts for viral social video, already operate successfully in a similar space. With Social Newswire, however, the AP is showing its work, when it comes to how exactly its staffers are finding and handling user-generated material.

“Our UGC experts around the world use SAM to find, track, verify and collaborate around social content,” Eric Carvin, AP Social Media Editor, said in a statement. “The AP Social Newswire offers a window into that work — what we’re looking for, what we’ve found, and what we’ve authenticated or debunked.” The tool is meant to be useful to both small and large news organizations, Carvin told Poynter: smaller newsrooms can rely on what the AP has surfaced via Social Newswire, and larger newsrooms with their own verification staff confirm if what they’re chasing is

The tool will be available to organizations at an additional cost.