The future of news gathering will serve the same purpose as it does today, but changes to the way its gathered might be best interpreted by King Kong — at least that’s the rational of Nir Ofir, founder of iamnews.com, an open newsroom platform that aims to give both publishers and reporters easy to use tools for covering the news.

Iamnews, which won the People’s Choice Award at the TechCrunch 50 demo pit, uses a cartoon version of the giant ape to explain how the platform works.

“’Journalism,’ ‘newsroom,’ and ‘platform’ are big scary words. We wanted people to understand the functionality apart from our big manifesto,” said Nir responding to a question about the colorful illustrations in an e-mail. “Oh..and they are cute.”

Much like the unconventional artwork, the idea for iamnews was born from a fictional story Nir was writing and not a desire to fix newsrooms from the inside out, according to an open letter on the Web site.

I imagined a reality in which the average citizen could be part of an innovative news network… whose reporters are citizens from all over the world, who participate in the creation of news. They would be directly connected to iamnews editors who allocate news assignments… I soon began to realize that this was not the world of science fiction, but something which could be done with today’s technology.

While the site’s name may suggest something metaphorical, it’s actually very straightforward. Publishers post assignments, reporters are invited provide coverage back to the site using several different methods and existing services. That information is then edited and eventually published. [The illustrated version does a much better job.]

Despite a busy schedule, Nir responded to some questions about iamnews and why he believes a new platform for gathering news is necessary:

Could you tell me a little bit about your background?
Prior to iamnews, I co founded blogTV.com, a LIVE social broadcasting platform that enables anyone to create his own TV channel on the web and on the mobile. I am an active entrepreneur in the Israeli and global Social Media space, specializing in the design, development and marketing of products and services in the field of communities and user generated content.

What kind of formal journalism experience do you have?
I had took some journalism classes during my bachelors degree in communications and media.

Why will iamnews.com work better (meaning, gather better news) than traditional mainstream media?
I think iamnews is a great workflow management tool for crowd-sourced news since it is an open platform. I think that for it to work better, iamnews needs to create a trusted network of reporters that will increase the discoverability of news. I also believe that by letting the audience be a part of the news creation process, News outlets can create a relationship with their readers. Relationship is everything for a new media brand.

Same question, but financially, how will iamnews.com succeed where traditional media is failing? (Will publishers pay reporters through the site?)
Well, this a really early stage for us but, we are planing to help publishers to distribute their content and by that create revenue to all the contributors.

Can any organization start using iamnews.com to find reporters to produce content?
We are planing to launch this kind of a solution by the end of the year.

Why is it important to allow multiple methods of submitting news?
We believe that users do not need to change their digital communications habit for becoming reporters on iamnews. Instead of forcing them to use our tools, we are pulling their content and pushing it to the news assignment hubs.

What limits does the site have for reporting news on a local, smaller level?
We do not have any editorial policy for when news starts and when it is ends. iamnews is a tool in the hands of the publishers. We are learning new things about what publishers want to do with this tool every day and we will try to crate the best simple functionality that will fit their needs.

For more information on iamnews.com’s progress check out their blog.