Yesterday ABC Managing Director Mark Scott gave a keynote address extolling the virtues of Twitter as journalism tool and arguing against paywalls.
“Lock yourself away - out of the conversation, out of the discussion, untweeted, unlinked, unreferenced - and you might find yourself unloved,” Scott told the 2010 Journalism Education Association Conference. He said that journalism would have to be financed, but that most experiments with paywalls have only reduced readers and limited their influence.
He went on to defend the ABC’s use of Twitter on programs like Q and A, because “the ABC should be a town hall, a commons, a place for connecting not just with content but connecting with each other”. He believes the public broadcaster should continue to be accessible to all and not become “a town hall which is not – as Tony Abbott’s first TV public forum at Rooty Hill was - locked behind the pay TV wall”.