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This oil disaster is such a huge story that all three newscasts are departing from their normal formats in order to signal to their viewers that they are aware of the intensity of their interest. And the signals they are sending also imply that the old medium of broadcast television is adapting to the new digital media age.
NBC anchor Brian Williams acknowledged his viewers' curiosity during his visit to Louisiana last week by framing some of his coverage (here, here and here) as answers to Frequently Asked Questions, to use a digital commonplace. Now ABC's version is to present David Muir's story on the use of skimmer boats and supertankers for oil clean-up under the logo ABC News Gets @nswers (spot the ampersand thingumebob, very tweety). CBS joins in with seven different pieces of reporting on the spill in a single newscast, each framed as the response to a question submitted by a nicknamed viewer via e-mail or on Facebook or by Twitter. Story ideas came from such sources as Semper46 and MemoryLane and CityofTucson.
Mark Strassmann covered the "proprietary and secret" size of the Macondo Field…Jennifer Ashton looked at air pollution…David Martin monitored the deployment of the National Guard…Jan Crawford speculated on possible prison time for BP executives…Debbye Turner Bell examined the fate of submarine wildlife…and so on.
This coverage makes a show of being contemporary and interactive and socially networked yet, in truth, it is a departure from normal journalism in stylistic terms only. At root, every single story on every single newscast has always been an answer to the question What is Going on Here? Normal journalism does not require that the activating question be spelled out or attributed. It certainly does not matter whether that question was communicated in digital form and transmitted via social networks. The test for interesting journalism is whether the answer is informative not whether the question is authentic.
These feature innovations are just gestures in order to signal to an audience that the newscast is aware of new media. They are not examples of new media journalism itself.
UPDATE: boy, am I embarrassed. I actually know that "&" is ampersand. What is the formal name for "at sign"?
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