A friend pointed me to this letter from CBC editor in chief Tony Burman to the CBC News audience heralding new developments at CBC News. I wrote back and said:
A few quick thoughts...
- 1 - Umm, CBC's difference platforms didn't all work on the same 'brand'? I never noticed and it never really mattered to me. This seems like a big announcement for people working / invested in the mothercorp, but to the public: ?
- 2 - This is baby steps - the big innovation being a letter from the editor posted on the web? The CBC is way ahead of anyone else in Canadian journalism in public participation and integrated web / TV / radio news, but it still seems pretty pokey in adopting new ideas and techniques in a global context.
- 3 - Where is the movement to citizen journalism, to making it easier for people to submit and participate in the news-gathering and production process?
- 4 - Online, they need to get beyond themselves and start to think about the stories they're covering beyond their own coverage. For instance, they need to become an aggregator of stories about a story, which is what they do when the write an original story, but make it transparent to the audience so they can check out the sources, source materials for themselves. Also, why not let the readers / audience write / create for CBC News?
As a sidenote to myself, I wondered if there needs to be a coalition of worldwide public broadcasters working together on related efforts whose rewards can be enjoyed beyond national borders?
And speaking of public broadcasters, BBC News will broadcast from inside Second Life, an online role playing game with a large following. Now that's addressing the story at its heart.
And speaking of how Canadian media can connect with their audiences, Canadian Geographic does a great job of exploring The Land of Music, an in-depth series of articles that profile Canadian musicians and how their music comes from their land. I promise, it's not shlocky at all, and it's not even necessarily good for you.
Posted by James Sherrett at January 10, 2006 03:57 PMIt's a mistake to roll this out as a major development at CBC News. Sort of like dropping your drawers and gazing at your navel at the same time.
The only people that will (a) notice and (b) care about this change will be the crusty CBC loyalists who will take the chance to call in and complain about CBC's much- (not to mention rightly) maligned mgmt team. Oh, and the guys at Razorfish who worked on the last revolutionary rebranding exercise for CBC.
Posted by: Craig at January 10, 2006 04:48 PMAnd don't forget about the balance/bias distractees at cbcwatch.ca!
http://cbcwatch.ca/
How long do you figure it will take them to rebrand the stie to match the BBC lookalike sites of the CBC?
Posted by: she beeb seed at January 11, 2006 11:36 AMWow, I'd never come across the CBCWatch.ca site before. Those are some folks with a lot of time and frustration on their hands. Their OCD is certainly focused.
I also wanted to add another bullet point to the commentary above about the CBC News announcement. In keeping with their accessibility mandate for all Canadians, can they please stop using proprietary file formats in their audio and video files? Give us plain MP3s and MPEGs and users will play them however they choose.
What's the concern with open standards? That people will play them and pass them on and other people will play them? Gollee, that it scary. I thought that was the purpose.
Posted by: James at January 11, 2006 01:01 PM