The face of journalism is changing these days. You don’t have to be a professional journalist to get your story published or viewed. Journalism media houses are eager to get their readers/viewers to help unearth stories, click pictures and take videos that they (journalism media houses) wouldn’t be able to unearth under normal circumstances.

To this effect, CNN has unveiled a page on CNN.com that opens up the online news giant to article, video, and picture submissions. Called CNN Exchange, the section on CNN’s website aims to place its mark on the “user-generated content” arena, especially with viral video sites that fill up with video clips that capture essential moments from stories in the headlines.

Mitch Gelman, senior vp and executive producer of CNN.com, was quoted saying, "User-generated content has the potential to play a pivotal role in journalism whether it's online or offline. With CNN Exchange, we've essentially created a one-stop shop for CNN.com users to share their contributions with other Internet users."

CNN, in the past has had to turn to sites such as YouTube and the like to source videos for its newscasts. With CNN Exchange in place, the network hopes to have users coming to them rather than CNN going to YouTube.