Liane (Host): Earlier this month, five French-speaking journalists spent a week in a house in the French countryside—no cell phones, no TV. They could use only Twitter and Facebook in their reporting. Janic Tremblay is a reporter with Radio Canada. We contacted him via Twitter and Facebook, but for this conversation we’ve called him in Montréal. Welcome to the program, Janic.
　　Janic: Thank you. Hi, Liane.
　　Liane: What...what did you learn?
　　Janic: You are—if I may say—who you follow. It means the people you are following are giving you their perspective on the world. We’ve also learned that it can be a very powerful radar. When you think about it, Twitter can be the biggest news agency in the world, because each one of us can feed it with a computer or a smart phone.
　　Liane: Was there a...a story in particular that you wished that you could’ve verified in other ways while you were in this house?
　　Janic: Yes. At a certain moment people started tweeting about the fact that Carla Bruni, you know...
　　Liane: Yes.
　　Janic: ...the spouse of Nicolas Sarkozy, that she was pregnant. Of course, since we’re journalists, we checked that…how the news would evolve and we saw that there was no news there.
　　Liane: Where’d you go to verify information, to find out whether...
　　Janic: Well, we could try through our own network. There were some news about, you know, it involved the police in Montréal. And so I didn’t have much information about the whole thing and I couldn’t get any. So, I just sent a tweet, and rapidly, people began to give me some details about the first 1)fragments of information that I had.
　　Liane: What was the greatest challenge for you as a journalist doing this?
　　Janic: The diversity of information is not that important on Twitter once you’ve removed traditional media. Some journalists are very active on Twitter, and therefore, their tweets are retweeted a lot. So, their vision of the news becomes the official one. So, it takes time to build a good network, so that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m trying to choose the good people, the ones that are producing 2)symphonic notes rather than the ones tweeting about their opinions, which is a legitimate use of Twitter, but that I have no use for as a journalist.
　　利安（主持人）：这个月初，五个讲法语的记者在法国乡村的一间屋子里度过了一个星期——没有手机，没有电视，他们只能使用微博及脸谱网进行新闻报道。贾尼克·特伦布莱是加拿大广播电台的记者，我们通过微博及脸谱网与他联系，但我们是打电话到蒙特利尔找到他，进行这次采访的。欢迎上我们的节目，贾尼克。
　　贾尼克：谢谢，你好，利安。
　　利安：你有什么收获？
　　贾尼克：如果让我说的话，那就是你关注的人体现了你的想法。就是说，你关注的人会告诉你他们对世事的看法。我们还认识到了网络的能量很强大。你想一想，微博可以成为世界上最大的通讯社，因为我们每一个人都可以通过电脑或智能手机向它提供讯息。
　　利安：当你在那间屋子里时，有没有哪件特别的事件是你希望能用其他方法再去证实一下的？
　　贾尼克：有。在某个时候，人们开始在微博上谈论卡拉·布吕尼——你知道……
　　利安：是的。
　　贾尼克：她是尼古拉·萨科齐的夫人，说她怀孕了。当然了，因为我们是新闻工作者，我们核查了一下……看看这新闻会如何发展，但我们看不到相关的消息。
　　利安：你们到哪里核实信息？弄清楚是否……贾尼克：唔，我们可以用自己的关系人脉网。有些消息说，你知道，这涉及到蒙特利尔的警察，而我对整个事件所知甚少，什么消息也不知道。所以，我就发了一条微博，很快，人们就对我之前得到的消息片断补充了细节情况。利安：作为一名新闻工作者，这样做对你们的最大挑战是什么？
　　贾尼克：一旦你撇开了传统媒体，消息的多样性在微博上就不是那么重要了。有些记者在微博上很活跃，因此，他们的微博被频频转发，所以，他们对新闻的观点被大家普遍接受。所以，建立一个好的网络需要时间，这也是我目前正在做的事。我试图去选择合适的人，选择那些能从多种角度提供信息，而不只是发表自己意见的人。当然，在微博上表达自己观点是正常的，但作为一名新闻工作者，那对我却毫无用处。