Cool newsblog by Bush radio

Thanks to Bush Radio for alerting me to their cool blog project by their trainees. It’s not quite opinion and comment, which is what we are used to getting on blogs — but they are using the blog format to publish their written news stories. A blog can be anything you want it to be — but I wonder why their stories are being blogged rather than being published on their official radio website? Perhaps because it provides a great CMS with which to publish the stories that maybe the main site doesn’t have?

But also — perhaps Bush Radio’s blogs could be used for further comment by their journalists or anchors (no time limitations on a blog), or perhaps they should create a blog engine for their listeners to opine? In any case, it’s great to see them blogging and it’s a good start.

It also makes me think of the converging media world. Via M&G Online’s upcoming podcasts we will be “broadcasting” via the web, getting Robert Kirby to read his columns and also accepting audio advertising on the podcast, ie radio advertising. But here is a radio station which is publishing/blogging in text. Where is it all going? It looks like media companies, big and small, will be creating media in a variety of formats: text, audio and video. It’s what the internet enables us to do, because it is cheaper to produce, broadcast and distribute over the net. Without the internet it is unlikely Bush Radio would have been able to publish in the same way M&G Online wouldn’t have been able to “broadcast” in audio via podcast.