Newsnight, the BBC’s flagship news and current affairs TV programme in the UK, will be blogging the G8 summit in Scotland on 6-8 July.
Actually, that’s not strictly true. Although Newsnig8t (that word really needs to be in colour so you can better spot the “g8” in there) clearly is a BBC-approved blog, it’s run by Newsnight’s correspondent Paul Mason. On the Newsnight website, it’s referred to as “Paul Mason’s G8 blog.”
You’ll probably think I’m just splitting hairs here. Ok, main point – there’s no question, it’s a great example of the growing willingness by more mainstream media journalists to embrace tools like blogs to complement traditional news and information channels. As has been clear for some time now, the BBC has been grasping new media channels like blogs, RSS and podcasts with a vengeance, and enabling more journalists to use those channels.
What I find quite interesting is that Paul’s blog is a hosted TypePad blog, complete with RSS and trackbacks that you find on nearly every TypePad blog (like mine, for instance). The only thing it doesn’t have is direct commenting on the blog. Instead, you’re directed to a comments page and form on the Newsnight website.
In any event, it’s another good move by the BBC to enable this.
(Hat tip: Joel Cere)
Links: G8 summit
Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.
Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.
