SANTA ROSA — A small television station canceled its nightly newscasts and is soliciting programming from locals — from independent filmmakers to teachers and Sonoma County politicians.

KFTY-TV in Santa Rosa fired most of its editorial staff Jan. 26 because, station managers said, the newscast wasn’t a hit with advertisers. Now media executives nationwide are eager to see whether the Clear Channel property can make money from citizen-generated stories that will begin airing within a few months.

Station executive Steve Spendlove hasn’t determined whether residents who submit programming will be paid, or whether the station will feature hard-edged investigations into corruption or scandals.

“There will be a loss in local coverage, I’m not going to lie to you,” Spendlove said. “But there are a lot of other places to get most of that information.”

KFTY’s switch is an ambitious experiment in “citizen journalism,” the mainstream media’s equivalent of user-generated content at YouTube and MySpace.com. South Korean Internet newspaper OhmyNews enlists thousands of citizen reporters, and U.S. news outlets ranging from CNN to San Francisco Bay Area NBC affiliate KNTV get content from viewers’ camera-equipped cell phones and home video cameras.

“Traditional journalists, even the very best ones, can only tell a story from the outside looking in,” said Mitch Gelman, CNN.com’s executive producer. “What you get from citizen journalists is a view from the inside looking out.”