Adrian Van Klaveren, Adrian, how will interactive news look in, let's say, ten years time? How much further beyond the viewers poll, phone in, e-mailed pics etc, can we realistically go?
Asked by Londontowner on Nov 18 2007 8:36:57 PM and supported by 24 members
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I think the role of debate within the news will be the thing that really develops. At the moment it’s possible for people to react to things whether it’s by text messages or by email but there’s not a sense of something going quickly backwards and forwards and that real exchange of ideas and how that works and I think that will change much more that people can make a point, get an instant response back, in the way that you and I would in a normal conversation. I think broadcasting will be more into that area. I think the use of video interactively is something that will grow, instead of what is essentially a text based interactive content it becomes much more video based and you can actually see the people- and it will become much more engaging to a wider audience I think, if it moves in that way. And a sense that it will be much easier to find the particular debate that you are interested in- today we are still quite led by “What is the Today programme discussing?” or “What is going on on Radio 5 Live?”, or whatever. A sense that we can actually let people set the agenda themselves more than is currently the case, that interactivity will be much more the things the audience want to talk about, as opposed to us trying to guess what we think the audience wants to talk about. Shrikala asked the follow up question: Will this affect the model of journalism – when anybody can be a journalist, will the actual art of journalism suffer? I think that’s the worry but I actually don’t think that will be the case. I think that journalism has still got a very proper and essential role. Journalism, in the end, is about finding things out – its not just about commenting on things – I mean journalism is about going away, getting information, putting it together and then making sense of it and I think that there is a role for that which people will still value hugely- that somebody is able to work out what’s actually going on in terms of how political party funding works for instance – they are going to want journalism on that, not just to say what they think about it. And that will only come from journalists who are spending the time and the effort and have the background knowledge actually to try and make sense of it. I think there is still a very important role for journalism there.