But Sterne wasn’t having that. Instead, she set up GroundReport.com, an open source global news site that shares revenue with its far-flung network of 4,000 citizen reporters. Called “the Wikipedia of news,” its goal is to democratize the media by making original, intelligent reporting possible for amateurs and professionals alike. More importantly though, the site produces international news at a fraction of the cost of the mainstream media by relying on locals for hyperlocal coverage.

While the financial benefits of this system are clear, Sterne maintains that the coverage you get from people who are living the stories they’re reporting is just as important.

“Everyone who’s reporting is experiencing these things first hand,” said Sterne, bent over her laptop at the WeMedia Game Changers conference. She showed some streaming video from the conference through GroundReport and elaborated on her belief that first-hand coverage from the people most affected is the way to go.

“You get the sort of perspective that a reporter from the states can’t really get,” she said.

And Sterne counts on this close up view to create public pressure around events like the genocide in Darfur. This is not to say that GroundReport is a hub for tales of martyrdom and whining about how hard life is in places where machetes are tools of government. By sticking to an objective, 450ish-word format that Sterne compares to that of The Associated Press, the site’s reporters strive to make their very personal coverage professional, as well.

“Whenever I look at global news Web sites, they tend to suck,” said Charlie Beckett, director of POLIS and author of “Super Media: Saving Journalism So It Can Save the World.”

Plagued by problems of lack of feedback and disorganization, international reporting sites can easily turn into disjointed messes requiring the sort of navigation that few readers are looking to participate in.

“I don’t want to go to GroundReport and spend half an hour digging around for something that’s interesting,” Beckett said. “I don’t have time for that.”

Fortunately for Beckett, he doesn’t have to. The front page of GroundReport is populated with the highest rated posts, as are all the site’s topic-specific pages.

“We have an active Wikipedia-style editorial team that can revise any content on the site and a rating system that determines what goes on the front page and in our RSS feed,” said Sterne when asked about the organization of the site.

While this does result in a scattered front page — stories like “5-Wheeled Car Slides Sideways for Parking” situated right below “Sri Lanka Announces Truce to Save Civilian Lives”— it also provides a departure from the chronology-based blog style that leaves readers like Beckett itching to get out.

Like most start up ventures though, GroundReport’s growth is hindered by a lack of capital. The site launched in 2007 with seed money from Sterne’s own savings and family contributions. Since then, cash prizes like those GroundReport won at the German “Open Source Meets Business” conference, content partnerships and advertising have helped defray the costs.

At this point, the site is paying for itself, something few global start ups can claim. The money being generated is enough to continue and subsist, but not enough grow to the extent that Sterne would like.

“The logo is probably the only thing I’m happy about right now,” she said of the amateurish appearance of the site. But until GroundReport sees an infusion of capital, the visual mock up of a more professional looking site will remain nothing more than a mock up.

But half the beauty of Internet-based projects lies in the unprecedented low overhead, which allows GroundReport to continue operating and testing its methods even without any major investments. And the aspect of the site most often questioned — its complete reliance on untrained citizen journalists and volunteer editors — is also its saving grace as far as money is concerned. The site shares ad revenue based on the quality and popularity of contributors’ articles, which spurs better contributions but also puts a natural cap on the amount that the site will have to pay for each specific act of journalism.

On GroundReport, writers succeed only when the website as a whole does. And while sums like $52.59 for 33 postings look paltry to Americans, they don’t seem so puny to contributors like Kenyan Fred Obera. “I’m not in it for the money, but it does make life better for a poor journalist like me,” he said.

Sterne added, “It’s enough to make participating worthwhile for some of our contributors in developing countries.”

It’s also a major factor in differentiating GroundReport from other citizen journalism and global reporting sites. The former rarely pay their contributors and the latter have higher overhead costs because they’re employing professional correspondents.

Chief among such sites is Boston-based GlobalPost.com, which employs professional journalists living around the world at a base rate of $1000 for four posts a month. Charles Sennott, Global Post’s Executive Editor and VP, is a fan of GroundReport but notes that, “our journalists, from what I could gauge, are considerably of a different realm.”

Offering contributors some amount of money for the posts does provide some incentive for good reporting, but it also keeps the site from reaching a level of quality necessary to compete with Global Post and the big boys of Internet-based foreign reporting. GroundReport can’t switch to the Global Post model, which generally means employing journalists living in foreign countries, without undermining its entire strategy of relying on hyperlocal coverage from the locals.

But I wonder if this very strategy will keep them from ever developing the audience they’ll need to expand.

Photo: Screen shot from CNN.com