So you wanna be a journalist eh? Well, these days, just start a blog and you're good to go! Unless of course you're Apple and you don't classify bloggers as journalists. (See Apple suit against blogger) In any case, the good bloggers tend to be great writers and researchers - traits of any good journalist, but do they have the verbal interviewing skills of a no-nonsense, go-getter journalist hound? After all, many bloggers write more words using their keyboard daily than the number of daily words they speak!

Well, someone emailed me an interesting article last week explaining how Skype can be used as a low-cost tool for community media production. The interesting premise goes as follows:

I'm a big fan of the Charlie Rose interview show on public television. Charlie Rose has a knack for drawing people out, getting them to share their ideas and views in a way that illuminates. But did you ever stop to think that the only people who appear on his show are celebrities? And that 99 percent of the interesting people in this world are not celebrities?

So who's going to interview all those people? Answer: the people will interview the people. What tool will they use to do this? Skype. How will these interviews be shared? Over the Internet, via public access television stations, via podcasting and via various computer media.