Apple’s iPhone is so much of a game changer on the news reporting front that even local media organizations are rushing to accommodate support for both users and reporters.

Knoxville, Tennessee based KnoxNews released their own iPhone application last month allowing users to upload their own reports to a profile hosted via im.knoxnews.com. Each report can be accompanied by a photo and categorized by subject and search tags, which are also chosen by the user.

Please note: this is not a simple news reader for people to check the latest headlines wherever they are. This is an application that is best served as a tool for reporters — citizens and professionals alike.

Only two other applications offer functionality similar to the KnoxNews’ app: the CBS eyeMobile and FOX’s uReport. Of course the case can be made that the Facebook application also allows for instant updates of news, but its not directly affiliated with a news organization.

What’s interesting about the KnoxNews app is how the developers have managed to surpass the large broadcast stations in terms of functionality. Both applications from CBS and FOX are limiting to users wishing to conduct a report due to the components required for submission.

“The FOX application won’t even let you begin the report until you take a picture,” says Senior Software Engineer Ben Henderson of Firefly Logic, whose company was commissioned to do the KnoxNews app.

Henderson and Firefly Logic partner Chris McPherson explained to me in an interview that they wanted to allow the users to decide how to best use the features rather than forcing them into snapping a photo as is the case with the applications from the broadcast media companies.

“What we did was basically take KnoxNews’ content management [system] and extended the functionality to the iPhone,” McPherson says.

Cell Journalist, the company behind KnoxNews’ Content Management system, have commissioned a similar iPhone application for their other clients as well.

If you understood the title written above, skip down to the link, install the script and enjoy your FCC violation-free twitter feed that is safe to broadcast over live television. However, if the headline made no sense to you what-so-ever, then don’t worry. It’s still not that difficult. I can explain how to do it pretty quickly actually:

Rather than explain what each part is, I’ll just cut to the chase. First you should be using the Firefox browser (it won’t work unless you use Firefox). The next thing you need to do is download a Firefox add-on called “Greasemonkey,” [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748]. After that you need to download/install (meaning click a button) a greasemonkey script that adds two new fields under the menu sidebar. These are filters for you to Black-list and white-list certain words or users…all you do is type the word in, then hit enter and that word disappears from your feed temporarily.

Want to remove the filter? Just delete the text in the field and hit enter again or reload the page. It’s great for broadcasting a visual of the feed without the fear of cursewords popping up.

It’s seriously that simple. I just tried it out and it works flawlessly. Here’s the link to that particular greasemonkey script:

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/36522

(Just remember to stay hypersensitive to all updates and version changes…like when Firefox has an update, just check to make sure the scripts from greasemonkey are still functional…small price to pay in my opinion)

Much like book covers, you cannot judge a Web service by its vowel-less, silly name. The truth is, the best web services — Flickr, Google, digg — often sound like nonsense, making many newsrooms disregard them. Yet, what they fail to realize is that these services are tools, despite whatever the tag line describes itself as. Here are a few web services that deserve a spot on your news tool belt…

Breaking News - Summize.com
If you’ve ever heard a tidbit of breaking news and want to get more I’d suggest consulting Summize, which is a search engine that collects conversation from twitter updates. Reporters may find it useful when trying to find additional clues at the very beginning of a breaking story. Of course you’ll still need to verify the info but its great for generating possible ledes.

Locative Journalism - Seero.com
Seero is a Mashup that combines the power of video with Google’s Maplet technology. The service works by plotting the location of the video on a map and then following any change as the video plays. After watching a car chase scene from a movie on Seero, I’m convinced it has practical reporting uses. Reporters charged with maintaining a timeline of events could use the map mashup to give a sense of reality to their reporting. It’s just one of many ways this service can be used though.

Virtual Newsroom - FriendFeed for Smart Phones
Newsrooms are busy places. So for reporters who are out of the office for extended periods of time on assignment, it could prove difficult to stay in the loop. Using a program like friendfeed on your smart phone could change that indefinitely. If you have to coordinate with a few folks and are not always at your desk, it could be a very valuable tool for your news tool belt. However, this is somewhat less practical because it would require many people to use the service for it to truly be effective.

Finding Contacts - Twellow.com
Yet another twitter-based service, Twellow.com collects a directory of people by their profession. Off the top of my head I might consult this service more for initial research on an enterprise story that I did not know much about. It may even lend itself to finding good sources specific to what your writing about. At the very least its like having a busy trade show for every profession imaginable right at your finger tips.

More News Tools:

Vozme - A text-to-speech web app
CitySense - Search for large crowds in real time using GPS
BrightKite - Location-based social network