Business Cornwall breaks new ground

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The Business Cornwall live blog team reporting at the event
The Business Cornwall live blog team reporting at the event

Business Cornwall has broken new ground in local reporting by providing a live blog of a local constituency debate between the principal representatives and prospective parliamentary candidates for the newly created Truro and Falmouth Constituency.

The coverage (which can be viewed here) is believed to be the first example of a political debate at a local level appearing on the web in real time using a mixture of Twitter updates and live update system, Cover it Live.

The event organised by Truro legal firm, Follett Stock, brought together politicians from Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, Mebyon Kernow and the UK Independence Party to answer questions submitted by the local business community.

Around 40 business people were there in person to pose questions and listen to the debate. It remains unclear how many were able to join the debate online; however, a number of questions and responses were received throughout the debate.

Business Cornwall and parent company, Tonick Media, are now preparing for an even bigger project of the same kind with plans to provide rolling live-blog coverage of the upcoming social media conference, Like Minds to be held in Exeter next week.

Nick Eyriey, Editorial Director at Business Cornwall said,

“The media is in a time of massive change and our audience is searching out new and interesting ways to interact with and receive news coverage. At Business Cornwall we have put a lot of work into researching the market and opportunities for new reporting methods utilising new media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

“The levels of engagement on the our news site and in the wider community in general provides us with firm evidence that our audience wants a richer and more diverse range of content. We will continue to develop and respond to those market expectations,” he continued.

To see all the comments made on Twitter click here or search for #tqt.

A photo slideshow of the event can be viewed here.

1 COMMENT

  1. Thanks to Business Cornwall for covering the debate. I thought it was a really constructive exercise and all the politicians on the panel made some well reasoned and persuasive points, perhaps of a better quality than you might get on the usual BBC version of question time!

    With the technology now available, hopefully this kind of initiative will soon become widespread and we at Follett Stock look forward to being able to help organise another similar event closer to the forthcoming general election.

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