The Guardian’s open news TV advert shows how The Three Little Pigs story would be covered in print and online.
The video charts the news story after the little pigs hit the headlines for boiling the wolf alive. Conversation moves from print to the web as the issue is debated via Twitter and other social media channels, following the open news hashtag: #opennews. Although there is initial sympathy for the pigs, a Youtube video shows that the wolf is asthmatic – he therefore could not have physically blown down the pigs’ houses. This leads to the pigs being arrested for fraud; they framed the wolf after being unable to meet their mortgage repayments.
The Guardian’s advert works to highlight the process of open news, and the way in which news organisations are adapting, in line with the web to get “the whole picture” on a story; incorporating developments online, as they happen, and shows how stories can progress with online input. The pigs’ fraud would not have been discovered had the video of the asthmatic Mr Wolf not been published.
Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian explains what open news actually is:
“The technology team work out the best way for a newspaper’s content to be shared, distributed and connected as easily as possible and build a piece of open software to make it happen.
The newspaper is moving beyond a newspaper. Journalists are finding they can give the whole picture better.
This is what we mean by open. The newspaper is the Guardian.”
Social media facilitates communication and engagement between news organisations and their readers, as well as interaction amongst readers around a certain subject. These conversations have become a driving force behind news, with journalists now sourcing breaking stories via social media, and using it as a tool to gauge the opinion of wider society on the news they are covering. This element of conversation provides a wider, rounder and more engaging layer to news stories, offering “the whole picture” as the Guardian’s tagline goes.