BY DAVID KRONKE >TV CRITIC

Last month, former Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore accepted a special Emmy for Creative Achievement in Interactive Television.

Gore declared, "We are trying to open up the television medium so that viewers can help to make television and join the conversation of democracy and reclaim American democracy by talking about the choices we have to make." He added, "More to come: Current.com, next month."

That tease by Gore, who co-founded Current TV with Joel Hyatt, comes to fruition today with the unveiling of the new Web site (formerly Current.tv), which hopes to make it even easier for visitors to contribute to what Current puts on its air.

Current presents short news and lifestyle reports called "pods" in a scheduling shuffle - it's not unlike the early days of MTV, only with news and pop-culture reports instead of music videos. The network strives to offer stories not seen elsewhere: It does a lot of international stories (one chilling report about the emergence of the Russian skinhead movement debuted last week) and first-person reportage (Current was the first to show the effects of waterboarding, performed on a correspondent who was a former Navy SEAL).

The network debuted in August 2005, and though the network doesn't subscribe to the Nielsens, meaning there are no hard numbers on viewership levels, it has already achieved profitability (by comparison, in its decade-plus of existence, UPN never got into the black). It is also the youngest network to win an Emmy, and Joshua Katz, president of marketing for Current, declares, "What they gave us an Emmy for is nothing compared to what we're doing now."

Current.com represents a marriage of mainstream media and the social-news site, where those who visit the site dictate its content.

"There is a place where you can have a social-news site and have editorial direction," Katz says. "We think that's one of the key points of differentiation for Current - we're taking citizen journalism and blowing it up bigger than before."

From the outset, Current TV invited viewers to submit their own stories for possible use on the network; today a third of its programming is user-generated. Potential stories are voted on by viewers at the Web site; Current editors may then edit them further, and the creator is compensated for his or her efforts.

Current.com will allow its visitors to continue to provide links to outside stories, but with the use of a webcam recorder, it will also allow those with webcams to offer their thoughts on news stories. It will also issue "assignments" to visitors, informing them on stories that are being investigated and asking for any assistance or insight on the subject matter that they might be able to provide.

Those whose offerings prove helpful will receive credit.

"If you were at a network news meeting, if someone came in and said, `This just came in from one of our viewers,' they'd laugh and move on," Katz says. "But `This just came in from one of our viewers' is the essential element of what we're doing."

"I'm surprised at how smart and how in tune to what the network is our audience is," Katz says. "I don't think this is going to be a place where Britney (Spears) nipple slips are going to be terribly relevant.

They're not going to turn this into TMZ; they're not going to turn it into CNN."

"Things that come in are completely random, from all different kinds of angles - a lot of international stuff is submitted by our users, but we do get the Britney stuff submitted, too," adds Amanda Zweerink, director of Current's online community. "When it comes into Current, it has the Current spin on it, so it doesn't necessarily have the snarkiness of celeb blogs out there, or, `Oh no, this'll shock Middle America.' "

As Current watched other networks take baby steps in achieving a kind of superficial interactivity with its viewers, it decided to stay ahead of the curve, Katz jokes, by "shoving three people down in a basement and told them not to come out until you've figured it out."

Oddly, the Burning Man arts festival - which, not so oddly, has a huge presence on Current's Web site - proved to be the inspiration for the network's latest expansion of interactivity.

"The `eureka' moment came when they put a map of Burning Man up on the wall," Zweerink recalls. "The map showed all of the different camps and took up the whole wall. They cut out pictures and put up pictures of constellations around it.

"And they looked at it and said, `This represents such a swath of humanity and interests, and yet they come together, and they have this one core interest. We need to build a Web site that represents this whole swath of people with a whole constellation of topics.' "

David Kronke, (818) 713-3638  david.kronke@dailynews.com www.insidesocal.com/tv