Looks like I'm not the only one that forgot there was a blog post due today.

Flash journalism is exactly the reason that I decided to go with convergence over photo. It's an exciting field mostly because the rules have not been set in stone yet, and maybe never will be because of the fast-paced change in technology.
The parallel drawn between the online journalism world and video games was interesting. I had never thought about plunging the viewer quite that deeply into the story. Clearly, the author was not suggesting making a game when it did not apply to the news story, but there are many narrative stories where that would be a helpful tool, such as, for example, getting people to try to reenact someone's real life paper route. I don't know when that particular example would ever show up, but it's just an idea to show how games would have a place in journalism. Drawing ideas from video games for journalistic pieces also goes beyond just creating games. People who play video games get to know that virtual world very intimately. If the same interest in a virtual interactive reconstruction of the real world could be replicated without the game aspect of it, I think people's understanding of a story, especially one that takes place in a culture completely different from our own that needs to be understood to grasp the full impact of the story, would be undoubtedly enhanced.
I also think we should remember that if we have fun putting the news out there, people will probably have fun looking at it and get more out of it in the process. I'm not advocating misrepresenting the facts, just not taking ourselves too seriously all of the time. There's just as much damage that can be done in approaching this job in an overly serious way as there is in too lighthearted of a way.