Sanoma Digital has launched a new user-generated breaking news Web site that also gathers material for a series of weekly free newspapers by using an open-source journalism platform.

The Finnish news publisher last month launched Vartti.fi to allow users to upload multimedia content directly to the site.

Editors ask for submissions, and also publish story threads. All the stories are also published in seven local weekly editions of Vartti that are distributed in and around Helsinki, Journalism.co.uk reported Monday.

“With the Jokela High School shooting we had one of the first pictures in Finland (from the scene) which was taken on a mobile phone, we then sold it on to publications in Norway and Sweden,” Janne Kaijarvi, editor-in-chief of Vartti, told Journalism.co.uk.

Contributors are paid about 50 euro for photos that make it into the paper's print edition, and Sanoma takes the copyright, according to Journalism.co.uk.

Kaijarvi also said that the site broke news about a Helsinki train fire. Reporters found out about the fire when a train passenger uploaded a picture to the site that had been taken inside the train.

Vartti.fi is the latest of five news Web site start-ups Sanoma Digital has launched since the beginning of the year.