Tuesday, April 08, 2008

The future of news

Except I don't think it's 'news' so much. I get the feeling that in a dozen years the idea of a discrete show dedicated to 'news' is going to seem as quaint as tail fins are to us.

Can't happen? Ask the guy running your daily newspaper a dozen years ago if there is anything to the idea that 'the internet' could gut his classified ad revenue ...

What am I talking about? This - it's a site that carries streaming live news from dozens of video feeds and cams - LiveNewsCameras.com - Watch Live Streaming News From the USA and World - Beta Version.

The key feature is a moderator who scans the feeds and, from time to time gives you a pointer to the more interesting items. The moderator - or at least the current pointer, one Athenia Veliz - is not a professional broadcaster, coiffed and reading from a teleprompter. There are minutes long pauses between audio. She pauses, she looks around, pushes her hair back, bangs on the keyboard and mouses around ... she's just this person, working for a living.

For some reason this works better than watching a Ken Doll read the news. Go figure.

Go click. Give it ten minutes and you'll either like it or throw a puzzled glance like a dog trying to understand Shakespeare.

Update:

About three seconds after I hit 'send' on a mash note .. the pointer was reading it on the air.

How nifty-keen is that?
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