News organizations might find a good model for online citizen journalism in this unlikely place: The Joke Project.

This unique video joke site -- launched recently by a Web editor with whom I've been working, along with a couple of documentarians -- captures short clips of ordinary folks telling their favorite jokes on the street or in other simple settings.

The jokes are rated from "squeaky clean" to "extremely naughty" and are fairly timeless, although they occasionally dip into current news. They held a "DaVinci Code" joke day, and they're scheduling a Bush joke day for July 4.

If you're in the mood for a laugh, check out the site's archive and index. They also blog their jokes.

All in all, it's a creative approach to a universal subject, with viral potential and a sensible business model (video syndication).

So where does the citizen journalism come in? It's in the fascinating underlying motivation for the project, which refers to itself as a "joke-u-mentary." The creators clearly are not just having fun. They're also exploring the folkloric quality of humor, and compiling intriguing statistical findings.

Furthermore, they're also trying to to capture something inimitable about the joke-telling process -- for instance, by dwelling on the teller's own reaction in the seconds after the joke ends. Perhaps that's what's most compelling about this site: the nicely affecting way it puts a face to a story.

Imagine now if news organizations were to try to capture the same feeling for local coverage. They could gather short, thematically organized video clips of residents talking about anything from favorite pet tales to local history, from gardening tips to hometown heroics. That could make for compelling content, even if captured not by professional cameramen or journalists, but rather by the residents themselves using fixed video recording facilities (a la StoryCorps's idea for recording "outposts" -- see their FAQ).

These video outposts could be in a location(s) anywhere in town, such as in a local community center, a library, or perhaps in the lobby of the news organization's headquarters itself, all with nice promotional opportunities. I'm no video technician, but I'm thinking it could be housed in a compact, phone-booth sized space: a simple digital camera setup, posted guidelines or theme suggestions, a single push button to start the tape rolling, and a countdown clock for the finishing point.

I think a local news audience would love it. Perhaps someone out there could give it a try and let the rest of us know!

Meanwhile, this guy walks into a bar ...