BBC Backstage: Brilliant!

The BBC has launched Backstage, a service that allows anyone to 'remix' BBC content. I can't endorse this announcement strongly enough - instead of fighting progress, the BBC has found a brilliant way of working with it. It's hard to understand the significance without concrete examples, so check out the prototypes page.

One developer has already created "a social bookmarking tool just for BBC News that allows logged in users to tag/bookmark stories and view related stories that other users have tagged using similar terms."

Another protoype turns the BBC World News Feed into a podcast. Thank God - now I won't have to listen to the pledge drive on NPR on the way to graduation tomorrow!

Seriously though, any news organization that doesn't seriously consider following the BBC's lead may as well accept the inevitability of its impending extinction.