CROYDON'S CRACK AT IT

The Croydon Advertiser is a sight trying to merge paper news with other media platforms.

Quite obviously the sight does not have the money to provide journalists with flashy technology to create mini-films. Instead it provides what, I think, people want from a local sight - just enough information to know exactly what’s going on.

The sight has expanded the role of the photographer to create slide-shows with pictures and accompanying music. Lasting a couple of minutes the shows illustrate a local story such as final rehearsals of a school play.

Although the slide-shows are low budget and will never win awards they do what they set out to do by simply illustrating text.

They work because they are cheap, quick and put the audience in the story. But at the same time they are not the type of stories which would benefit from the effort which would go into making a visual piece for internet news.

With this in mind, will those news corporations thinking about creating local internet news, end up wasting their time and resources on stories which are best demonstrated by text and a still image?

If corporations sign up to internet news they are going to have to provide a regular service and meet deadlines. With this hanging over their heads they may make visual features simply for the sake of it and cause local news to become stilted.

CHECK OUT
www.thisiscroydontoday.co.uk

Chew Television

Chew TV is an Internet Television service based in Cornwall. Funded by Government and media industry grants it aspires to give young people a chance to make their own films which will be posted on the site.

If you log on to the site you can currently watch films including Far from Home, a film which depicts life in Cornwall during World War 2. What impressed me was the high quality of the films on their, all made by 14-25 year olds.

The channel states that in the long term it will use advertising to help pay for the site, though there isn't to much of that on the site at present.

From time to time the channel offer bursaries to young people who come up with the best film ideas.

The channel claims that it is watched by industry professionals scouting for young talent. All in all this is a great site and well worth looking at!