Jeff Reifman announced on the News Cloud blog the release of an open Application Programming Interface as part of an effort to make NewsCloud a fully open platform for media distribution.

The goal is to expand the potential for citizen journalism by helping developers embrace and extend their work. The NewsCloud web services allow other community developers to easily interact and expand the stories and features at NewsCloud.com.

NewsCloud readers submit stories and videos from around the Web to read, vote on and talk about.