The San Jose Mercury-News, known for their high-quality reporting and photojournalism, is taking a leap into crowd-sourcing by partnering with Tackable to create a geo-based photo app. In fact, according to an article at the Poynter web site, the Tackable developers are actually working in the Mercury-News building.

The app will be social in nature - the developers hope to motivate contributors with 'leaderboard' competition and even coupons.

Here is an info video about the project, which has aspirations beyond the SF bay area:



This project is interesting because it deals with one of the biggest problems getting reader-generated content to media web sites and print - actually getting people to contribute. When somebody gets a photo of something noteworthy, they are quick to post it on Facebook for their friends to see. But sending it to the local newspaper has a higher threshold - it is simply not up there on most people's priority list. This app promises to take on that problem by building a community, fostering friendly competition and even offering some minor physical rewards.