It is a fact that Facebook and Twitter have become part of our daily routines. And it’s also a fact that we spend immense amounts of our time just scrolling down our Facebook pages, reading inaccurate news, and risking to end up in open web’s traps.
Offering a solution to the increasingly dangerous online web, software developer Dave Winer introduced his Plan B to a full room on 7 April at the International Journalism Festival. With his blogging platform Scripting News, Winer offered a formula where users have the opportunity to choose the news, and the blogs they want to read by themselves, without being forced to follow what Facebook or Twitter suggest. Everything on the blog page is open and transparent, with users being encouraged to leave their comments and express their opinions.
The aim of Scripting News is to give ideas and freedom to the users. Winer and Aron Pilhofer, James B. Steele Chair in Journalism Innovation at Temple University, referred to the relationship between journalists and web developers: both sides need other in order to create accurate information resources that could be easily reached by the audience. Someone needs to provide users with better news, a need that makes it necessary for journalists and developers to work together, agreed the panellists. Both speakers insisted that open web can be a threat, but there is still space to use if for our benefit.
Listen to what he shared with the International Journalism Web Magazine regarding his initiative of implementing a Plan B to provide a ‘home for news on the open web’.