Been a busy few days reinventing the JC as an online publication, while also putting to bed a 184-page print edition (credit crunch? not when there are hundreds of New Year advertisements to fit in among our editorial columns...). So the team here has been busy looking for creative ways in which TheJC.com can complement what we can do once-a-week in print. Prime example: we sent one of our two star web producers, Jessica Ware, to film the London march in honour of Gilad Shalit over the weekend. The result: a two-and-a-half-minute video clip that combines atmosphere and interviews in a way we could never achieve in print. And if you think the filming is professional, here's a secret: Jessica happened to be at the march with her father, the accomplished BBC television journalist John Ware, and is clearly picking up expert tips. (Though, to avoid creating an office broigus, I should stress that the work was largely Jessica's own...)
There has been some unwelcome breaking news to update on the website front page - such as this morning's attack in Jerusalem when an East Jerusalem Palestinian drove into a crowd of Israeli soldiers. Pretty quickly our Foreign editor was blogging to set the story in context. You don't know how refreshing this new freedom is for a team of hacks who normally get just one shot a week at telling their community what the story is - and often four or five days after the event. Having worked at other newspapers where staff felt threatened by the publications' websites, I have to say that our own transition to multimedia is going remarkably smoothly, with pretty widespread enthusiasm from participating staff. Why, they'll even let you see what they look like. Ah, the eternal lure of the picture byline...
Still, at risk of provoking more broigus, the most powerful blog of the week belongs to a guest contributor, Gideon Schneider, who wrote a piece for us and is now blogging about his unwelcome journey into the world of Hodgkin's lymphoma. Gideon writes elegantly and with wit and self-knowledge, and I'm told is already attracting pledges of charitable donations. He is also helping others who have experience of this and similar illnesses, as you can tell from the moving comment posts.
Now, isn't that just the sort of online conversation that gives real value to a community like ours? So go sign up for yourself. You don't need us to tell you what matters.
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