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Sunday, June 21, 2009

Other topics are more or less covered so the scope ccould include more on text, journalism and publishing. Books include images also but it seems to be words that are the basis. The talk around "Digital Britain2 so far has been mostly about how to preserve exisiting structures. Bigger fines for piracy, that sort of thing, today Peter Preston in the Observer suggests that BBC funds should be paid to newspapers for local news and other good work. No mention for bloggers, citizen reporters, funding some slightly better lighting for the average web video or indeed anything at all on the positive aspects of what web technology makes possible. Preston seems rather pleased that the MySpace business model might be losing market share and jobs. Why not look at the business model for OhmyNews? I have been sensing in text stories for a while now but how a similar approach could work with video is still an open question. I am not suggesting that all the stuff on YouTube is great. But a discussion would be useful that included the potential for all citizens to contribute. Most of the coverage and policy seems a bit limited. The idea that closing down BBC free news online would result in a rush of subscriptions for UK newspaper sites only makes sense for people who do not experience the news online from other sources. The UK is quite a small place, not as grand as seen by London media.

Also, whatever happened to the BBC archive? Some time ago there was an idea to make old clips available for a mashup etc. This seems much more sensible than anything recent.

A couple of searches later, it turns out the BBC Creative Archive stopped in 2006 but the Open University still has something.

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