Where does the BBC have bureaux and why?

Journalism.co.uk had been surprised to learn at last month’s Journalism in Crisis event that the BBC used only stringers to cover South America, according to director of news Helen Boaden.

The location of global bureaux ‘is something to do with your colonial past’ she said, adding to comments by BBC director-general Mark Thompson, when he was questioned by an irate audience member on the corporation’s lack of coverage in that part of the world (specifically Latin America).

Audio here:

Does the BBC really have no bureaux in Central and South America? Well, the BBC press office later told Journalism.co.uk, it depends how you define stringers and bureaux.

There is a distinction between ‘newsgathering hub’ bureaux and ‘non-hub’ regional bureaux the BBC spokesperson said. While there are no ‘newsgathering hub bureaux’ in South and Central Americas, there are four regional offices, located in Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Havana. How many in each, Journalism.co.uk asked.

Two in each of the four cities: one producer and one local fixer, both on sponsored stringer contracts with retainers. Other individual stringers cover the rest of the continent other parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, with freelancers working from Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Chile and Jamaica.

It’s an interesting question: where are international news organisations’ bureaux and why? A particularly pertinent one to raise, given the difficulties in accessing material from Iran at the moment. The BBC office in Tehran remains open, but permanent correspondent Jon Leyne has been ordered to leave the country, the corporation reported yesterday.

While the BBC had two producers inside a Gaza office in 2008, it did not have any permanent crew on the ground and this affected its coverage of the crisis at the end of that year, and the early part of 2009.

It was helpful for Al Jazeera to have people already based in Gaza, as its two correspondents told Journalism.co.uk in a live-blog interview in April.

NB: Whether Al Jazeera were the ‘only’ English-language international broadcaster in the area for the 12-day media block is still a bone of contention: a journalist later reminded Journalism.co.uk that his employer, Iranian government-funded Press TV, was also reporting from the region during that period.

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Cit-J agency photographs from Iran make front page of NYTimes… twice

Further to our round-up of Demotix activity from Iran, here are two front pages from the New York Times, both featuring images from the pro-am agency’s contributors.

Demotix images have also been published by the Telegraph, El Pais, Wall Street Journal, ABC.es, and syndicated by Reuters, AFP and EPA to other outlets around the world.

“The bravery of our Iranian reporters has been astonishing. They are defying their government and risking their safety to tell their stories to the world, and we are delighted to be able to help them make their voices hear more loudly,” said Demotix commissioning editor, Andy Heath. “Demotix exists for moments like this.”

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Times Labs: Guess the paper from the headline – just for fun

Times Online’s lab has created a rough (its words not ours) application for guessing the publication by a headline.

Nice for some Monday morning entertainment.

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Mark Jones: Rolling news coverage – what works for Iran?

Reuters’ global community editor Mark Jones offers a useful round-up and guide of how to cover major breaking news stories, such as the recent events in Iran.

“The challenge here is to match what TV stations can do when they switch between news bulletins to rolling 24 hour coverage. Only the web ought to be able to do so much more given its scope for interactivity,” he writes.

Jones looks at how liveblogs and reporters logs are being used by news organisations, in addition to ‘aggregating validated citizen journalists’.

Full post at this link…

[Journalism.co.uk has its round-up of pro-am news site Demotix is covering the Iranian elections story and you can read the comments of BBC global news director Richard Sambrook here]

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Craig McGill: NLA charging for backlinks – a response

As reported by Craig McGill last week, the UK’s Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) is considering charging organisations for links to newspaper articles.

On Thursday, McGill asked whether the agency would backdate charges and have they considered the impact on traffic this might have for newspaper websites.

The agency has now responded in full to McGill’s questions – including the information that it will not backdate charges and that the change is aimed at organisations and not individuals.

“This is not about bloggers adding links to newspaper sites. Our focus is on professional media monitoring organisations (news aggregators, press cuttings agencies) and their client business who make extensive use of the newspaper content,” it says.

“The monitoring industry is highly responsible and wants to work with us – because they want a healthy newspaper industry too. The NLA has been in dialogue with the media monitoring companies for over a year on this subject.”

Full post at this link…

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MorningStar.com: Readers will pay for online within five years, says Axel Springer exec

In an interview with Dow Jones, reproduced by the Morning Star, Axel Springer chief executive Mathias Doepfner says customers will be willing to pay for ‘online quality content’ within the next five years.

Significantly, Doepfner adds: “However, our business cases aren’t based on a breakthrough of paid content but will work anyhow.”

The chief exec plans to generate 50 per cent of Axel Springer’s sales from online operations within the next 10 years, according to the report.

Full interview at this link…

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Editors Weblog: France extends newspaper subscription plan

France has extended the age range of its free newspaper subscription scheme. The country’s government will now offer a free newspaper once a week for a year to 18-24-year-olds, under the 600 million euro scheme.

Full story at this link (via Le Figaro)…

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Malcolm Coles: MPs’ expenses – the best of the web

It’s fair to say Journalism.co.uk is interested in the media’s coverage of the recent UK MPs’ expenses scandal, so before we start rivalling the number of Telegraph pages published on the subject, here’s a round-up by Malcolm Coles of the best source data, visualisations, analysis and reportage.

A great guide for data-based storytelling too.

Meanwhile, on the front page of today’s Guardian an update on the title’s own crowdsourcing MPs’ expenses project – as reported by Journalism.co.uk on Thursday: almost 20,000 people have taken part and 160,000 pages examined.

Journalism.co.uk particularly liked this par from the Guardian’s report:

“All this will take much more careful analysis but shows the power of ‘citizen journalists’ and provides something of a riposte to one Telegraph commentator who dismissed the idea that a ‘collective of Kool-Aid slurping Wikipedians’ could conduct ‘rigorous analysis necessary for the recent MPs’ expenses investigation’.”

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – top training courses for journalists

Training: Want to brush up on your digital journalism skills? Check out Journalism.co.uk’s own short courses for cutting-edge training from leading tutors. 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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Twitterers claim victory over loaded Daily Mail gypsy poll

The UK-based Mail Online was forced to shut down one of its online polls yesterday after a concerted campaign by Twitter users and, Journalism.co.uk can reveal, UK-based psychologists, nearly brought their servers to a halt with an overwhelming ‘yes’ vote.

The poll, which asked the somewhat leading question “Should the NHS allow gipsies to jump the queue”, attracted ridicule from many within the Twitter community leading to, at one point a 96% vote in favour of the proposition.

Brighton-based senior lecturer in experimental psychology Dr Sam Hutton contacted Journalism.co.uk today to reveal that there was also an email campaign among UK-based psychologists who, as part of their jobs, take questionnaire neutrality seriously.

“One reason I think there were so many yes votes was because a psychologist got hold of it, and sent an email which quickly got copied to virtually every psychologist in the country, suggesting that we all vote yes as a way of protesting against such a ludicrously loaded question (psychologists care about questionnaire design),” Dr Hutton said.

“It clearly worked – it was actually 96% YES when I looked, but the server was struggling, and they have removed the poll completely now. A nice example of an online newspaper getting it wrong…”

This is the email that Dr Hutton, and psychologists all over the UK, received:

Here is an excellent example of how to phrase a neutral question from our friends at the Daily Mail… for all those interested in questionnaire design:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/polls/poll.html?pollId=1011506

Please do vote “yes”

Angered Twitter users have now vowed to take their campaign to all of the Daily Mail’s online polls, taking the opposite stance to the expected response, given the Mail’s reputation for having a ‘Middle England’  readership and an editorial line against what it sees as the liberal establishment.

Footnote: Readers from outside the UK might be also interested to read about the Mail’s history – in the 1930s it openly backed the British Union of Fascists, aka the Blackshirts.

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