Operator Arthur Stevens told jocks Journal that for small news networks many of the big end newsroom solutions are either too expensive or have too many bells and whistles, many of which are not required.

"We needed an environment where all our writers, editors and presenters could log on, access our newswire facilities, write and edit stories and produce audio reports for use across the network, and store them in a common location that all can access"

In conjunction with Geelong's MD Media Consulting AIR News has now launched it's own Virtual newsdesk environment as part of its back office operations using the Internet as the carriage medium.

The Virtual Newsdesk allows users to modify their own display to make the location of some features appear where it suits them.

"It's not complete yet" says Stevens, "but as the main modules are all functional we decided to launch it to our people and have found that all have embraced the environment."

There's even a chat section so team members can discuss ideas and stories between them.

Stevens uses the facility every day himself: "I like the fact that I can write and edit the bulletin in the same place that I import the audio grabs, and when complete simply click the Present button and the whole bulletin is moved to a Teleprompter style screen with instant playback of audio grabs in the correct order as required. I simply read it live and it just works."

AIR News and MD Media Consulting are considering making the VN package available to Community stations and smaller Commercial Radio networks in Australia and overseas.