About

Funded by the Department of Education and run through the East of England Broadband Network (E2BN), Making The News (MTN) was a web-based system derived from ROSTRA, the news portal that had been in use by KMi almost since its inception. Society lived in a world where news was everywhere, as the media industry generated news 24 hours a day. The initiative encouraged individuals to create their own news, claiming it was easy to do so. Users could submit news stories containing text, images, sound, and even video clips. The media industry, including television, radio, and newspapers, supplied expert guidance and resources to help individuals understand how to create local stories about themselves, their schools, local communities, or regions, as well as national or international topics that mattered to them.

Beyond the features offered by ROSTRA, FlashBlogging enabled students to record short sections of video using a low-cost webcam via a small Flash webpage, instead of merely entering text and images of their stories. For more in-depth stories, FlashBlog messages could also be combined with other media.

MTN was moderated; all stories submitted by students entered the system and awaited approval from one of several teachers before becoming live. Students could preview and alter their stories, if necessary, before grading and publishing them. Each school in the system had its own set of moderators and administrators.

MTN was trialled on 11th November 2004 by a group of year 9 students from Lord Grey School in Bletchley, and it was shown at the annual BETT show at Olympia in January 2005. Eventually, MTN would allow schools from all over the country to post news stories. The best of those stories, as judged by their own teachers, were passed up the system’s hierarchy to appear on the region’s central website. An RSS feed would then take the best of those stories to appear on the national website.