[LINK] Getting the NBN message online

[Tom Worthington]

According to media reports Prime Minister Gillard announced an expansion
of the NBN (National Broadband Network) on Friday:
<http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2010/s2969167.htm>.

The frustration with such reports is finding out exactly what was
announced. There were 454 news items about this on Google news:
<http://news.google.com.au/news/more?pz=1&cf=all&ned=au&cf=all&ncl=d3v84_YcFqv3LeMjL9jltptp0KShM>.

I went to the ALP web site and looked for NBN on the front page. There
was a panel on the top of the page which said "National Broadband
Network" but before I could click on it, this disappeared and was
replaced with an item on health. So I went back to the Google news to
see if any of the news items had a link to anything substantial. It is
very frustrating that all the news items appear to be written from
essentially the same media release, speech text, or press conference
transcript, but it is very difficult to find these source documents.

What I did find was a link to "Reverse PR". This is to a media release
from Senator Kate Lundy and the other Canberra ALP candidates about the
NBN, issued after the PM's speech:
<http://www.reversepr.com.au/2010/07/31/2138/nbn-co-high-speed-broadband-coming-to-your-town/>.

What is interesting about this is that the media release is on a
specialised media release distributing service, supported by web ads.
Anyone can submit a media release to the service and subscribe to
receive the releases. There is a very efficient mobile edition and
access via RSS feeds. Google then aggregates this alongside more
traditional news sources.

If the parties were to use this, or similar services, for their major
announcements I might then be able to find the details, in amongst the
media reports. Of course if they were to design good web pages I might
be able to find their polices more directly.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au