The BBC’s efforts have paid off well and the site is globally popular. So much so that Ireland’s Fine Gael political party has seen fit to provide their online users with the same format as the BBC website.

It seems very unlikely that the Fine Gael site holds as much information or fact behind its homepage as the BBC but at least they’re trying to look professional!

The information providers themselvs are also a part of this issue. Robert McChesney has long been an enemy of the converging media giants and when government and media moguls come together the problem is significant.

Google, the worlds biggest search engine, provides your news by trawling  through news providers on the net and presenting you with the results of your search. But what if some news or news media get preferential treatment?

Peter Barrons move from editor of  BBC’s Newsnight to PR man for Google makes me wonder about the political and financial value of news.

We think the Net willl always be free. How could censor us or charge us? Consider this, Ireland has rainfall almost fifty percent of the year but we pay for water and its not great quality.

It is becoming pretty obvious that the internet and assosiated technologies will be our primary news providers within the decade and people must become techno savvy . But with so much happening what do you do?

It keeps coming, more and more, blackberries and blueteeth and now people twittering all the time. I’m afraid I’ll miss out on so much before I can grasp the latest technological advancements.

Recently, while online, I digested a story about the actor Ashton Kutcher, Mr Demi Moore (wikipedia!) beating CNN, America’s most popular news website, to one million Twitter followers. Is this where we are at?  His day to day musings have attracted more attention from the hip people than CNN?

Some bloggers note that it was all a charitable act, Mathew Ingram’s blog provides in depth analysis luckily.

Having gone to Mr Moore’s  twitter page I found the most recent and profound entry, though I’m not sure it’s from him, which read, RT @yehudaberg: ‘Empathy teaches ppl 2 trust their feelings & intuitions, & it creates sensitivity 2 the feelings & needs of others.’ 

Had I not discovered Twittering I would have never have read those wonderful words. 

I vow to continue  my efforts to become ultra modern multi media savvy. Otherwise I might miss something else important.

!

Old school news hounds will be dismayed at the amount of competition they have these days but the bottom line is if the report is good then thats all that matters.

If I need a carpenter to hang a door I’m just as happy if a handyman can do it for me. And he’s cheaper. The door is hung it doesn’t matter who hung it.

Robert Niles has written a great blog on this very issue and his point is pretty simple;  no one owns the news.

Old press hounds beware. If its truthful and well written then its a genuine piece of journalism. Its that simple.

USA Today reported on plans to turn the website into the cashcow it always had the potential to be.  It will mean the eventual replacement of the general public’s random downloads, most of which are pointless anyway.

But they do allow a freedom of expression and transfer of information by ordinary people unconceivable only a generation ago. Last week Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, spoke for an hour at the annual conference of the Newspaper Association of America. Youtube has the entire 53 minutes on one video.

We are all equal, some of us more than others. Will the media giants of today and tomorrow provide not just the tools to communicate but also the rules?

 Schmidt seems very cleat that its about looking after customers, not citizens. Is that what journalism is to become in the internet age?

The falling sales of both advertising and copy are the simple reasons for the closure. Right up until the end the staff thought the paper could be saved given the service it has always provided for it’s readers and the greater community as a whole. Most were shell shocked at the announcement but they have bounced back and quickly!

The InDenverTimes has just launched on line and is hoping to be even better than the old Rocky Mountain News. Ironically it’s the low cost of online news publication that will allow the new ‘paper’ to provide more for it’s readers than ever before.

The Christian Science Monitor is ceasing the publication of its daily print edition and is instead concentrating on providing a regularly updated online news edition.

Even then there are no guarantees. Todays reader and surfer is bombarded with messages at a rate he or she can barely comprehend. In this short video Christian Science Monitor editor John Yemma highlights the simple things that will make or break the ‘newspaper’.

However, by the late nineties friends told me these guys were getting far better organised thanks to the internet and instant communication. They still only seem to be able to attract weird disfunctionals but all the same the webpages that these folk promote as news sites is disturbing.

All you need is a disturbed mind and some basic technical knowledge and hello world! But if we censor them who’s next?

                                                 Crazyfolk.com

It’s a problem throughout the world but most significantly those poorest countries with the lowest number of newspapers and revenue channels feel it the most. On the other side it is argued that citizen journalism will fill the void, argueably for the better. But in countries notorious for crime and corruption who will trust  faceless citizen journalists?

The Nation is Malawi’s widest selling national daily and it has made the transition to on-line aswell. But have  a look at the amount of advertising revenue it is currently raising. Staying in print is getting harder and harder and few businesses in Malawi see an on-line market.

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