What Does Interactive News Mean To AOL?

from the not-much,-apparently dept

Mark Glaser notes that AOL is now promoting more "interactive" news that talks about "involvement journalism" and wonders if it's possible that AOL has actually understood participatory journalism. The simple answer is no. Not at all. AOL appears to believe that "interactive journalism" means you take some wire feeds, and add a message board or a poll to it. Maybe some streaming video, because, apparently, someone still thinks "interactive" means video. The real issue, of course, is that this won't matter much. Who uses AOL for their news coverage? It's pretty much the same thing you can find elsewhere, and the stuff that's really drawing interest for being different, the real "participatory journalism" is far away from AOL. So, they won't lose much with this new approach, but it's hardly interactive, and they certainly aren't going to gain much out of it, either.