Today, Ustream Inc., and the Huffington Post struck an exclusive deal that gives Huffington Post access to live-streaming videos from the site’s citizen journalists.
It’s a unique opportunity for both organizations. Ustream’s coverage can now be viewed by the Post’s near 37 million monthly readers, and the Huffington Post will gain access to diverse coverage of breaking events from all over the globe.
Here’s what the duo had to say in their press release about the partnership:
At 3:30 p.m. (EST) sharp, be part of the groundbreaking exclusive live press announcement event with Editor-in-Chief of Huffington Post Arianna Huffington and CEO of Ustream Brad Hunstable by watching and providing commentary through Ustream’s exclusive social stream at Ustream.tv/huffingtonpost. Additionally, after the live-announcement, Ustream’s up-and-coming citizen journalist Luke “We Are Change” Rudkowski will give his perspective on why being a citizen journalist is important for today’s society especially with this generations’ greater access to mobile devices worldwide.
Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group comments on the new deal with Ustream:
“We launched Off The Bus in 2007 to go beyond the one-dimensional horse-race aspect of election coverage and actually respond to the widespread dissatisfaction about the way campaigns are covered,”
“So I’m delighted that we are partnering with Ustream for Off The Bus 2012, and renewing our commitment to holding politicians accountable and telling the stories that need to be told by tapping into a wide range of voices and perspectives.”
Brad Hunstable, CEO and co-founder of Ustream comments on the deal with the Huffington Post:
“Citizen journalism is increasingly democratizing the Internet with live Ustream news events playing an important role,”
“Our partnership with Huffington Post will further push forward this trend and our mission to enable anyone, anywhere to share their stories. By combining Huffington Post’s world-class news reporting with Ustream’s live video citizen journalism, viewers everywhere will now have a raw and unedited perspective of diverse voices on the world’s most important events.”
In the last three years, Ustream has produced mobile apps for iPhone, iPad and Android devices making the process of streaming live broadcasts easier than ever. As a result, viewing on mobile devices has increased over 50%, and 1 out of 8 live broadcasts are coming from mobile devices.