While the Associated Press and newspapers around the US debate to compete against online news sources, they may be missing an even bigger threat: you and your iPhone.

The New York Times reports that Fwix – a local news aggregator – plans to enlist mobile social media creators to generate realtime local news coverage:

Fwix, will release an iPhone application this week that enables its users to file news updates, photos and videos, live from the field. The items will appear on Fwix’s year-old Web site, which also collects links to local news articles from newspapers and blogs in 85 cities.

“We believe we are the real-time local newswire,” said Darian Shirazi, Fwix’s 22-year-old founder.

When you consider the flow of information on a site like Twitter, it’s not hard to imagine social media being harnessed to generate localized real-time news.

The biggest challenges are filtering posts to find the real news and getting people’s attention.

“If it could be like The A.P. and be widely distributed,” notes social media researcher Peter Krasilovsky, “that could be fantastic.”

Do you think “social news” syndication, powered by individuals with mobile devices, are ready to replace traditional news syndicates?