The Newsgathering and Production Breakout group at Jeecamp very quickly came round to the use of ultra-modern technology.

The initial question, from a student journalist, into how best to find news and approach people brought an interesting array of answers (including visiting the Tourist Office in an area, and making contacts) but the one that sparked the lengthiest debase was Twitter.

Is Twitter a good source for news? The group was divided, with some believing it is a now-vital machine where you can follow the right people and get some great tip-offs. However there was some scepticism about the constant stream of traffic, and how best ot manage that - filtering out the nonsense and the speculation from the valuable facts.

The best advice came through: be careful not to follow too many people, or create a list for subject areas that you are working in so you can dip in and out when you need to.

The other big debate was blogs: and more specifically, are blogs journalism?

Considering this was a room of journalists and journalism students, there was a surprising accepance of blogs, with a pressumption that they can be sensationalist and opinionated. Some felt blogs were not a form of journalism, others that they had a role to play in filling in the gaps left by overworked jouralists who can’t, or won’t head into certain areas, geographically or otherwise. 

Sports blogs were touched on, and the potential business model - but it was generally accepted that blogs were more vauable in building reputation either for future employablitity, or in becoming a freelance expert on a particlar subject.

Hyperlocal  - one of the buzz words right now - sparked some interesting opinions, and questions about the future of traditional news outlets. Are we at risk of losing the objective news coverage, for a more subjective, and ultra-local focus?

Hyperlocal blogs, such as SE1 and KingsCross were raised a examples of sites covering an area well - but what is the future for the hyperlocal blogger? Are they going to make their blogs pay, or will they all be snapped up to become paid-up journalists/reporters for news outlets?

The final debate, before lunch was called, was the use of live streaming, and how this changing how people now experience news - instead of being happy with receiving the news the next morning in the paper, they want to not only have the story as it breaks, they want to participate, comment and help shape the story.