Reuters Editors
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Throwing a pebble and watching the ripples
Thomson Reuters hosted a speech by the British Prime Minister in London on Monday and we opened up the event to the Web with the help of two advisors — documentary maker Christian Payne and social media guru Mike Atherton.
These two have helped politicians, business people and even a Hollywood studio to connect with online audiences. Our event perhaps lacked a bit of Hollywood glamour but we had business people and politics in spades and we gave Christian and Mike full access to cover the event as they saw fit.
Christian created an alternative video feed of the proceedings using a Nokia mobile phone, and a wireless connection to the Qik social video platform.
This prompted a conversation in the Qik comments.
And somomething similar happened on Christian’s own site — OurManInside — which also carried a streaming feed and acted as a catalyst for another set of comments.
Success often starts with small steps like this, so the negligible impact on traffic doesn’t matter — for now. But at some point publishers are going to demand a return on their editors’ investments in new ways of reporting and connecting with the audience. Let’s hope a softer advertising market doesn’t crimp the news industry’s ability to innovate next year.