Daniel Meadows

Guest lecturer Daniel Meadows took today’s online journalism lecture on the digital age and digital storytelling. Daniel is a lecturer at Cardiff University and runs a digital storytelling website called photobus.co.uk. He led a BBC project called Capture Wales where members of the public were taught how to make their own digital stories.

Similar public engagement with the media is happening around us, for example community radio stations like Radio Cardiff which was officially launched today and the BBC’s Video Nation, where people are trained how to make a video about whatever they want to (here’s my younger brother Pascal’s video).

Daniel is optimistic about the digital age, it promises: interactivity, journalism as a conversation and the democratisation of the media. He believes that through making videos, the public is empowered. Daniel talked of the need for us trainee journalists to expand on the public’s engagement with digital media and believes that soon, part of being a journalist will be to facilitate the public creating their own media programming.

Assuming Daniel is right, I think the real challenge is to work out how we can allow all people to be able to make news items for the news programme. How do we bridge the digital divide and keep everyone up with the pace of the ever developing new media technology? I’m not sure what the answers are but am excited about how I as a journalist could be part of this digital media empowerment movement.