The BBC’s coverage of the July 7th London bombings last year was a turning point for citizen journalism. In 24 hours it received 20,000 e-mails, 1,000 photos and 20 videos, according to editor and then acting head of BBC News Interactive Pete Clifton.

And last week the BBC announced it will pay for user-generated content that is “editorially important or unique.”

The BBC staff has a new set of guidelines allowing them to make payments to citizen journalists who send in photos or video, but adds that “audiences should not be encouraged to think that payment is the norm.”

While the BBC stressed it doesn’t want citizens to put themselves in dangerous situations, some say it won’t “take very long before BBC employees start hinting out loud about the pictures they’d like to see from the ‘civilians.’” For now, it looks like BBC editors will have a new set of decisions to wrestle with –- figuring out what user-generated content fits the bill and how much that bill should be.

The announcement, while cautious, is another step towards a pro-am style of news. And hopefully not only will the quality of the news increase, but the relationship of the reader to the news will be strengthened as well.

Take Leonard Witt’s experience when he became a citizen journalist 30 years ago. He still has vivid memories of a Vietnam War parade where he filmed a skirmish between Teamsters and a hippie. The photos were sold to the New York Daily News for a whopping $10. I suspect, however, the next time Witt read about a protest that ended in violence he had a deeper appreciation of what went into reporting that story.