BBC has launched a new local blog called The BBC Manchester Blog. It is a community site that is designed to promote a local blogging network by aggregating content. Is it then BBC’s new initiative on cultivating the benefits from interactivity or get into user generated media?
BBC English Regions New Media’s senior community producer Robin Hamman, in an interview to paidContent.org said;
We aren’t sure if it’s aggregator, a citizen journalism project or a media literacy campaign - it probably cuts across all three.Anyway, this is a 3-month experimentation under with BBC will also provide advice and training for the development of the network for the creation of the local community that it intends to. For this, between ten to twenty volunteers have been recruited across Manchester. Those who are already into blogging are also invited to work or tag their content as ‘bbcmanchesterblog’.
paidContent.org raises the question that came to my mind as well. In my opinion, it is a shrewd attempt by BBC to get free content. However, Hamman says that the idea is ‘showcase some of the best stuff the participants are doing by linking back to the source’.
He adds;
Those claims that it’s just the BBC trying to get in and control a space would be more true if it wasn’t being approached in that way. If it was run by non-bloggers from some big media company I can imagine a lot of people feeling like their toes were being stepped on.CNN had also started an initiative where it is soliciting for video submission by users. I am not sure how successful this has been. This latest attempt by BBC has similar undertones.
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