Amanda Powell. Behind the scenes at BBC online

Amanda Powell, Editor bbc.co.uk/walesnews, was kind enough to give us a talk today on online journalism in general and the bbc-online in particular.

A 'behind-the-scenes' look at the goings-on at BBC Wales' online service, Ms Powell's talk raised more than a few interesting points about the nature of journalism in the age of the Internet.

My first impressions of Ms Powell were very good. Like Charles Reiss, former editor of The Evening Standard, who came to give us a talk the week before, Ms Powell did not come across as an archetypal editor of myth and legend - all fire and brimstone! I have no idea from where, or how, I have come to form this opinion of Editors, but I always thought they were supposed to be, well...scary! Still, it's early days and maybe my theory will be proved correct in time. Ms Powell's talk was succinct and well presented. She said what she had to say and did not ramble on - I HATE it when they ramble on! And what's more - what she did have to say was interesting and informative.

As I have said, although the talk was primarily a behind-the-scenes look at bbc-online's Welsh output, it raised many points about the nature of journalism in general. Not least of these is the growth in recent years of "user generated content", or "citizen-journalism" to you and me. In an age of Blogs, phone-cameras, e-mail, digital recorders etc etc, is the journalist even relevant anymore? In spite of the trend towards news organisations sourcing the public for news material, Ms Powell is of the opinion that there will always be a need for the objective and dedicated journalist - Amen to that!