What is Community-Generated Content (CGC)?
A practical guide for newsrooms
What is Community-Generated Content?
Community-Generated Content (CGC) is any photo, video, comment, or story that an audience creates and shares directly with a brand or newsroom.
It is not shared via social media platforms.
It is contributed directly to you.
CGC represents high-quality, intentional participation from a specific audience, and it includes valuable first-party data.
Rather than scattering conversations across external platforms, CGC lives on your own site, under your own editorial standards, where it can be moderated, trusted, and published.
What is Community-Generated Content (CGC) for newsrooms?
For publishers specifically, CGC has a clear editorial purpose.
Community-Generated Content in journalism is content created by a newsroom’s audience and published with editorial intent, not for promotion, but for reporting.
It is:
actively invited
structured around prompts or questions
moderated
integrated into editorial workflows
designed to inform coverage
It can include:
reader photos and videos
first-person stories
eyewitness accounts
opinions
lived experiences
data points
responses to newsroom questions
CGC is how newsrooms move from simply talking to audiences, to working with them.
Comments are reactive and often dominated by a small, vocal minority.
UGC usually lives on social platforms, outside editorial control.
CGC, by contrast, is invited, moderated, and built for journalism.
Participation becomes purposeful rather than chaotic.
Why newsrooms use CGC
Trust in institutions, including the media, is under pressure.
Audiences are overwhelmed by content, sceptical of authority, and increasingly disconnected from traditional formats.
CGC addresses this by:
making journalism more human and authentic
reflecting real lived experiences
showing audiences that their voices matter
allowing audiences to see their peers engagement
People trust people.
Audiences consistently say they trust content created by people like them more than content created about them.
For newsrooms, CGC helps:
strengthen credibility
increase time spent
build repeat visitation
create a sense of belonging
turn passive readers into active participants
It shifts engagement away from vanity metrics (clicks and likes) toward meaningful participation, the kind that builds loyalty over time.
→ Read: Why reader participation drives loyalty more than traffic
How CGC changes the role of the audience
CGC signals a mindset shift.
Journalism isn’t just produced for audiences.
It’s produced with them.
Inviting readers to contribute:
makes stories richer and more representative
surfaces perspectives the newsroom might otherwise miss
helps people feel seen, heard, and valued
When contributors see themselves reflected in coverage, they’re far more likely to return.
Participation becomes habit.
Habit becomes loyalty.
CGC isn’t a trend — it’s infrastructure
This isn’t about gimmicks or chasing “engagement.”
It’s about rebuilding the relationship between newsrooms and the communities they serve.
CGC turns journalism from a broadcast into a conversation.
And conversations are what keep audiences coming back.
How Contribly enables CGC (without adding editorial burden)
Contribly is built specifically for publishers, enabling teams to:
embed on-site call-outs directly into articles
collect structured audience photos, videos, text, polls, and data
moderate contributions faster with AI-assisted recommendations
move smoothly from submission to publication
capture first-party audience insights without platform dependency
The result:
Less time moderating.
More time publishing.
And a community that feels genuinely involved in your journalism.
→ Learn about: How AI Moderation Reduces Newsroom Workload
Key takeaway
Community-Generated Content turns audiences from spectators into contributors.
It transforms scattered interaction into structured participation.
And for modern newsrooms, participation isn’t “nice to have”, it’s core publishing infrastructure.