BlackBerry Honoured
Posted Jun 11, 2010 04:14:44 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Canadian-made BlackBerry has helped reinvent how much of the world communicates, and its impact has been especially profound on journalism.
Not since the printing press, or perhaps the Internet, has an invention so changed the media landscape. Its significance was recognized by the Canadian Journalism Foundation last night in a tribute to Research in Motion co-founders Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis.
RIM introduced the BlackBerry in 1998 and reporters were among the first to become addicts, thumbing out information back to their offices.
Journalists can now shoot video, record audio, research and write a story with a single device, at any time from anywhere in the world.
Lazaridis says the BlackBerry has made it such that news is now almost in real time.
But despite its mighty tool of the trade status, Christopher Waddell, director of Carleton University’s journalism program, says there is a downside.
He says the media too often allows political parties to capture them by using the BlackBerry to distribute their messages.
