Now Public founder and CEO Leonard Brody is looking for his company to do to the news business what Skype did to the telecommunications industry.

Mr. Brody, speaking on Sunday at Red Herring's ETRE, the annual European technology conference, this year in Budapest, said his company was relying enitrely on citizen journalists to cover news events.

"We are building the next generation Reuters,"  Mr. Brody said.

Now Public was founded two years ago and is based in New York and Vancouver, Canada.  The company claims to have the largest so-called citizen news network in the world with 130,000 contributors in 140 countries. Very few of them are actually paid. 

The site posts some 600 stories on an average day and already has 1 million unique visitors a month. The company has also signed a partnership agreement with The Associated Press to supply the news agency with images. Now Public claims that it had the first images out of Myanmar during the recent wave of demonstrations against the military government.

The content at Now Public comes from citizen journalists who are witnesses to events and are equipped with cell phones and the ability to take pictures or record.

Mr. Brody said that the growth of citizen journalism is due to an inability of news organizations to be on the scene of most breaking news events and increasing reliance of those under 35 on the Internet as their main source of news.

In July, Now Public raised $13 million, in a first round of funding, from investors led by Rho Ventures.