BBC Question Time engages with Twitter #bbcqt

The BBC current affairs programme Question Time has started watching the online debate around a Twitter hashtag, #bbcqt, that has become popular over the last several weeks. A hashtag is a way for Twitter users to create a debate around a particular topic.

During the May 14 edition of Question Time, which was dominated by questions around MPs’ Expenses and described as the most vigorous Question Time ever, there were around 3,000 Tweets during the one hour run of the programme.

Different people have used the hashtag in the past, including Mark Littlewood, who runs a blog called ‘Mark Reckons’ (@markreckons), and Marc Knobbs, who posted about the hashtag back in early March this year.

On a different note, a dedicated live blog even existed for a short time in 2007, focusing on text messages received by the programme.

Now the makers of the programme have created a Twitter account @bbcqt, and will be watching the online debate as a first ‘unofficial’ step.

You can read more information about the tools that are useful for following this volume of Twitter Traffic, and a more detailed account of the development of the Twitter #bbcqt debate, in my piece “BBC Twestion Time Takes Off with bbcqt hashtag: 3000 Tweets in one Hour“, on the Wardman Wire.

Matt Wardman edits the non-partisan Wardman Wire group blog which covers politics, media and technology. He is @mattwardman on Twitter, and mattwardman AT gmail DOT com on email.

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POLIS: Photojournalism at war

Insight from Danfung Dennis, a war photographer, on freelancing in the field in the digital age and making the most of new media skills.

Full article at this link…

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Adrian Holovaty: Is data journalism? The answer

“1. Who cares?

2. I hope my competitors waste their time arguing about this as long as possible.”

Full (-er) post at this link…

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Media140: Are tweets journalism?

There’s a wealth of great blog posts reporting/observing/filtering yesterday’s events at the microblogging and journalism conference, Media140.

To name but a few:

We Are Social at #media140 by we are social
Media 140 – The future of real-time news from you talking to me-dia?
Adam Tinworth’s round-ups
Kevin Anderson’s posts on Guardian.co.uk

One question that arose: does a 140-character update equate to journalism?

If it comes from a news organisation/journalists does this make it more journalistic? What about eyewitness reports of news events, for example?

Speaking personally, recent coverage of news events – using Twitter as one element – such as Al Jazeera’s tweets from Gaza, UK newspapers’ tweeting of the budget and G20 protests have provided me with breaking news, relevant contextual links and real-time insight.

As Suw Charman-Anderson commented (appropriately on Twitter): ‘isn’t journalism just polished-up conversations?’ – the conversations encouraged by social media use.

You can also add the question: does it need to be defined?

Perhaps, to a certain extent for news orgs, it does – with regards to accuracy, verification, regulation.

But as a format using Twitter in combination with other multimedia tools and outlets can create a new grammar for presenting news – and a way to unpack ‘journalism’ from its box and show the context, links to and conversation around what would previously have been a standalone ‘news item’.

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What was that Boris? Carve up the licence fee?

Last of the blog posts from last night’s Charles Wheeler award speeches, but just to share with you a question from London Mayor, Boris Johnson, to BBC director-general, Mark Thompson. Over to you, Boris:

“I really wish I hadn’t decided to ask this question.

“I love the BBC and I’m a big beneficiary from the BBC, but I have to say listening to your [Thompson's] critique, I thought you were showing some sort of guilt about what the BBC website is doing to other commercially operated websites, you know, run by newspapers and you were trying to say the BBC might paddle it, that guilt, by sharing resources online (…) I understand it would be a very good way forward.

“I don’t quite know how it’s going to work. I wonder if the simple solution might well be to carve up the licence fee and give a slice of it to the Sun, some to the Daily Mail…”

Thompson answered, to paraphrase, that it probably wouldn’t work very well.

A little more fully: there are countries where they’ve tried that, said Thompson. And the problem is, he said, that if you’re not careful, the ‘subsidy you need’ gets a bit bigger every year; and secondly, as a public service broadcaster one would ‘begin losing the critical mass’ in terms of the organisation’s culture, calibre of the output and public accountability.

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Media140: Twitter, newsgathering and trust

“We are putting a massive amount of trust in one platform here. Twitter is throttling this mechanism obviously for its own commercial ends (…) If we put so much of our newsgathering onto one platform we’re in real danger,” said Mike Butcher, TechCrunch UK editor, yesterday as part of a panel on the ’140-character story’.

While much of yesterday’s Media140 conference focused on best practice and how journalists can use microblogging tools such as Twitter, Butcher and his fellow panellists comments were a warning to news organisations tempted to jump on a social media bandwagon.

As journalists, ‘we always want the next big thing, because it validates the fact that we’ve written about them’, said fellow speaker Bill Thompson, referring to his own experience as a freelance technology writer.

But, added Thompson, if ‘old media’ rules are applied too readily to new media, organisations will ‘miss the essential quality of what Twitter is doing’.

Some ‘old’ guidelines still apply, suggested BBC technology editor Darren Waters: “We cannot get into a world where the real-time web means the ‘not wrong for long’ era.”

Listening to yesterday’s panel the issue of the personal/professional divide when journalists enter social media or online communities – indeed how ‘social’ they can be on these platforms – is still a work in progress.
The BBC is still working on its editorial policy towards personal social media use by journalists (and after all ‘social media’ is not some fixed, homogenous lump) – it has set out some guidelines at this link – the corporation must consider its relationship with its audience and to what extent personal content is seen as representing the BBC.

But – as panellist Jon Gripton, senior editor at Sky News Online, suggested – in terms of following up reports on Twitter and social media, for example of breaking news events, the same journalistic attitude towards fact-checking and verification apply.

A mantra from Thompson: “I don’t believe anything I see or read on Twitter, it tells me where to go.”

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BBC’s new slideshows on sport website

Not much more to add than the headline really – except that the new slideshows spotted on the sport site (by @davelee) have got some great images and load very quickly.

Hope to see them spread elsewhere on the site (or if you’ve seen more examples, let us know)

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‘Babel-like cacophony drowning out perception’ but new media still developing, says Paxman

So, as reported on the main site, and in John Mair’s tribute to the fearsome journalist, Jeremy Paxman collected the inaugural Charles Wheeler Award last night. His Newsnight colleagues had put together a little tribute, which as David Dunkley Gyimah pointed out on Twitter, is a ‘This Is Your Life’ style must-watch. Journalism.co.uk will try and obtain an embeddable link asap.

In the meantime, enjoy the clip at the end of this post: when Paxman dipped his toes into YouTube waters for Newsnight (which, incidentally, BBC director-general Mark Thompson later confessed to never having seen till that evening: “I had no idea  – I’d missed that”).

So Journalism.co.uk asked Paxman: you’re a little sceptical about social and new media, then?

“It’s a joke [his YouTube video - see below]! One of the functions of journalism, seems to me, [is that] it sifts and analyses – and it’s great to have a lot of raw material, but someone still has to sift it to make sense of it,” he said.

There are occasions, for certain stories, he said, ‘when one spends a lot of time looking at blogs… comments… it’s just time wasted.’

“We haven’t yet developed a mechanism for synthesising what comes out  – we’re currently at a stage where someone goes to a rally and writes down the comments of everybody there. That’s no way to report an event – it doesn’t tell you very much,” Paxman said.

“We still need journalists forming perception and analysis of what’s happening – that’s getting drowned out by this Babel-like cacophony. But we’re at a very early stage of development with it. I think there are new things going to happen.”

And, does he still advise wannabe hacks to go and do something more sensible and worthwhile, like become a brain surgeon?

“You do it [give advice] with a certain knowledge that those who are determined won’t be put off anyway. But, I think, overall, the prospects in this trade are not good,” he told Journalism.co.uk.

“Wages are being cut – [there are] apparently respectable newspapers which actually survive on work experience people – and not paid. This is no good! When you’re 21 you don’t think about it. You’ve got to think about it: the longevity of it, [being able to] afford to put a roof over your head and feed your kids etc.

“It’s always been a young person’s trade I think, but it’s even more that now.

“I personally believe in it of course – I think it’s a really worthwhile activity. But it is, I think, the case that there are more immediately socially worthwhile things that you could do with your life. I just think these are strange circumstances.”

Paxman trying out YouTube:

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – real-time Twitter search updates

Research: You can search Twitter for a specific term and save the results to create a real-time feed of updates to your profile, when you’re logged into your account on any computer. Tipster: Laura Oliver.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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Northcliffe’s operating profits drop 81 per cent

Regional newspaper publisher Northcliffe posted an 81 per cent drop in operating profits in the six months up to March 29 2009, according to figures released today.

Operating profits for the group, which publishes the Bristol Evening Post and Hull Daily Mail, fell by £33 million to £3.2 million over the period. Advertising revenues also fell by 31 per cent to £103 million.

The publisher has reduced operating costs, however, by 11 per cent compared to the last period – including a reduction of its headcount by 500.

On the digital front, revenues were reportedly in line with the same period last year. Unique ‘visitors’ to the network of ‘thisis’ sites rose by 42 per cent year-on-year to 4.2 million.

Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT)

According to the figures, DMGT’s revenue fell by 7 per cent year-on-year – from £1,168 million to £1,085 million.

The group’s outlook:

“Within our UK local media operations, revenues continue to be stable which is encouraging, when combined with increasing cost reductions. Within our national consumer media operations, the positive impact will be felt of the cost reductions made to date and of the sale of the Evening Standard at the end of February. As a consequence, DMGT’s operating profits will be weighted more than last year towards the second half of the year.”

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