By REGINA SÁNCHEZ JIMÉNEZ
In the middle of the huge competition and fight between news media to become the leading newspaper for readers, newspapers offer new services that have been previously unnecessary .
As I pointed in one of my past posts, online newspapers use new tools as Virtual Reality to offer a new experience of the same service. But that’s not enough now.
As a result, The Washington Post tries to differ from the competitors providing a service called “Washington Post Live.” It’s described as “the newsroom’s live journalism platform.” It’s a platform where legitimate voices of different fields discuss the main issues that concern the citizenship.
The service is based on live programs about some contemporary topics, but not necessarily related to breaking news. The procedure to attend is free and just requires a pre-registration. And for those people that cannot attend in person, they can subscribe to receive a notification and watch it streaming.
This open knowledge almost plays a public service role participating in the audience’s education.
If we assume that one of the duties of the news media is to inform the readers about issues that can impact their lives, we can claim that this platform contributes to achieving it. Also, it contributes to the democracy because an informed public serves democracy the best.
Photo by Esther Vargas
For example, the last program was the 8th of November about Cybersecurity: Personal Privacy in a Digital World and the next one will be on Nov. 14 about the transformation of American cities to adapt to demographic, economic and technological changes.
The Washington Post is a sample of how a newspaper without neglecting its main informative priorities, such as breaking news, can cover other important topics that most of the times don’t create break news by themselves, but they’re enough important to be known by the society. And meanwhile, The Post creates a discussion space and empowers every single listener.