Listed GMA Network announced that it has appointed veteran broadcast journalist Howie Severino as Editor-in-Chief of GMANews.TV, its official news web site.

Severino spent 12 years as a television reporter, host, and writer before making the plunge into online journalism.

"Becoming part of media's new frontier appealed to my sense of adventure," Severino said.

GMA said he will still continue co-hosting I-Witness, GMA-7's multi-awarded documentary show, but will scale back his other responsibilities in television as he devotes most of his professional time to developing GMANews.TV, already one of the top three news web sites in the Philippines.

"It's a great time to be joining the web. Social media is exploding, creating new forms of journalism. There's a lot of action," he said.

Recently, Severino directed the web site's innovative coverage of President Arroyo's ninth State of the Nation Address, in which live stream video of the speech appeared with a Facebook Connect interface allowing viewers to react in real time, the first time it was done in Philippine media.

Among Severino's plans will be to ramp up the site's multimedia content, build its online communities, and widen its coverage to include more so-called long-tail niche interests of the rapidly growing Filipino global web audience.