Maaaaaaaybe I have a future on the tinterweb after all

I'm not going to get carried away here, but we had a visit from Amanda Powell, Head of BBCi News Wales, and, unlike the other visitors we have had (and our own tutors), she didn't make me terrified about the ultimate demise of 'real' or professional journalism at the hands of those pesky civilians.

Instead, she made the whole shebang sound like a really exciting challenge - keeping ahead of the crowds, keeping them informed, setting yourself up as 'the' authority on what's happening in the world. It's a new sort of journalism, I guess, but I am a child of the online revolution (apparently), and I will greet it cheerfully.

She told us some amazing things about the BBC news website (which is a paragon of online excellence, view it at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/default.stm), such as the fact that her journalists can get a breaking story out in five minutes from when they hear of it. She explained their Content Production System, a way of uploading text and pictures onto the web (are you listening, livejournal.com?), which all sounded very simple and easy for the non-technologically minded such as myself.

Her most exciting comments were about the future of online journalism: audio and visual technologies on the web, the possibility of live, breaking news appearing online almost at the moment it occurs. I don't know about you, but this is exciting for anyone who things news is exciting. Which, technically, is everyone, or at least all journalists. She said that the BBC news website gets almost 25 million hits a day, a fact which lends itself to a vision of the future of a beautiful, glowing webscape of the world, all hooked on news and current affairs at the click of a button. Maybe the internet will not kill news, but open it up in brilliant and fascinating new ways.

Unfortunately as I am on livejournal I can't show you that pictorally. But, heck, use your imaginations while you still can.