Fashionably late to the party March 18th saw the launch of CNN’s “This Just In” news blog site. Responding to the recent trend for ‘real-time‘ content mainstream media organisations have been developing such news blog sites to report breaking and rolling news stories as “live articles/blogs”.
With a mix of informal language, citizen journalist as well as staff reporter content live blog are created in a similar way to a Twitter account. The page is updated through the day with numerous short updates on a specific topic, often with rich media embedded.
Last week’s eruption of the volcano under Eyjafjallajökull glacier in Iceland saw RTE, The Guardian, BBC News and The New York Times report the eruption’s aftermath in this “live article” format.
The challenge with news blogs and live articles come from the mailable nature of online content. Live articles can be seen as a ‘twitterisation’ of news media. It places reporters and media organisations in difficult situations- users want real-time information (look at the response to the death of Michael Jackson) but verifying such information is difficult to do at speed. While this is an issue for 24 news stations it becomes a greater issue for blogs as content remains online as long as its publisher exists.
