The Daily Telegraph has made it easier for people to submit stories and tip-offs to them with a new iPhone app but the question not being asked is: who’s checking the incoming stream for story quality? After all, it’s one thing to send in a scoop but what if no one sees it for three days?

Technology has been a bit of  a pain for newspapers – from printers being sacked to circulations being allegedly hammered by the world wide web – but some try to keep up. This little app from the Telegraph is part of that (I believe it’s part of the actual news delivery app) and it’s a nice idea – but how is it going to be checked? After all, staff and newsdesk are pushed enough to keep up with all the current incoming data streams – email (including junk folders), phones, TV, radio (anyone still listen to them in a newsroom?), text messages, other papers and so on – without another one.

“But not many people might send stuff in” you say. Fair point. In which case it will be very far down the list of ‘things to check’ in the copytasting queue which means there’s a chance stories will be missed or not reported about until days later – by which time the potential for it being a scoop has diminished.

I’m not knocking the idea – I welcome it – but is it going to be beneficial?

And secondly, what if a bunch of rival hacks decided to get all anti-social media and send you concerted efforts at fake stories. Imagine you received four or five texts telling you about a tale, you would feel obliged to check it out after all…