Scotland on Sunday: Rangers bans BBC from press conference

Rangers football club, which filed for administration this afternoon, has banned the BBC from its press conferences as part of an ongoing row between the club and the broadcaster.

Scotland on Sunday reported yesterday that the BBC was banned from recording a post-match conference because of what the club described as “repeated difficulties” over its treatment by the broadcaster.

The paper said: “After the club’s 4-1 victory over Dunfermline Athletic, listeners to Radio Scotland’s Sportsound programme heard BBC reporter Chris McLaughlin state that a Rangers press officer had stopped him recording. A witness said: ‘He was asked to remove his microphone and the conference carried on.’”

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Riots and phone hacking coverage shortlisted for RTS awards

Al Jazeera English, the BBC News Channel and Sky News will do battle for the title of news channel of the year at this year’s RTS journalism awards later this month.

BBC News at Ten, Newsnight and Channel 4 News are shortlisted for news programme of the year at the awards, which celebrate excellence in UK television news and current affairs.

Two rival channels’ coverage of last summer’s riots are nominated for home news story of the year – Sky and Channel 4 – alongside Newsnight’s reporting of the phone hacking story.

The nominees for TV journalist of the year are Sky’s Alex Crawford, Channel 4′s Alex Thomson and Newsnight’s Richard Watson.

The full shortlist is not yet on the RTS website, but can be found below. The awards ceremony will be hosted by ITV newsreader Mark Austin, in London on 22 February. More »

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#jpod: Broadcasters reflect on the challenges of 2011

This year has been an extraordinary year for news. 2011 has seen the deaths of dictators and despots, revolutions across the Arab world, natural disasters in Australia, Brazil, Thailand, the Philippines, New Zealand, Turkey and Japan and a global financial crisis.

This podcast hears from four broadcasters on the greatest challenges of this year and the news agenda for 2012.

Journalism.co.uk technology correspondent Sarah Marshall speaks to Tony Maddox, executive vice president and managing director, CNN International; Jon Williams, world news editor, BBC; Sarah Whitehead, head of international news, Sky News; and Tim Singleton, head of foreign newsgathering and assistant editor, ITV News.

Podcast: Download

For more reflections on 2011 read our interview with Sarah Whitehead, Sky News and with Tony Maddox, CNN International.

You can hear all our podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.

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App of the week for journalists – iRig Recorder, for recording, trimming and sharing audio

App of the week: iRig Recorder

Operating systems: Apple (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad)

Cost: £2.99 (there is also a free version)

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? iRig Recorder is a fantastic audio app, an essential for broadcast journalists, podcasters and anyone wanting to turn their iPhone into a high quality recording device.

The huge benefit of this app is the ease with which it enables you to trim audio and upload it, making it easy to edit out a fluffed introduction or an interruption at the end of an interview.

You can also clean the sound before exporting to SoundCloud, uploading to FTP, transferring to iTunes, by email or over a wireless network.

At Journalism.co.uk we use this app to record face-to-face interviews, immediately uploading the audio to our SoundCloud account (where we have acquired almost 4,000 followers).

Reviews: It gets three stars in iTunes App Store.

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – how to write scripts for radio news

The Media Helping Media site has published a copy of a useful guide for those starting out in radio, which the post says was produced for the Media Resources and Training Centre at the University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka, outlining key issues for journalists to consider when writing news scripts.

The advice includes a look at the pros and cons of writing a script before or after carrying out interviews, as well as construction a powerful introduction and close to the script.

Read the full post here.

Tipster: Rachel McAthy

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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#news2011: Russia Today on raising awareness through its FreeVideo platform

After the second day of sessions focused on business at the Global Editors Network news summit, including paywalls and paid-for app, it was fitting that during the third and final day of presentations we heard about projects offering content and platforms for free.

One such project came from Russia Today which outlined its FreeVideo platform, described as an “English language video agency”. The website, which should be of interest to journalists worldwide, provides free video footage that journalists can download, edit and reuse for their own projects and output.

Answering a question from the floor about the business model, Alexei Nikolov, managing director of Russia Today, said it was to “promote the channel” on a global scale.

The site includes “stock footage” as well as video covering specific news events. Xenia Fedorova, head of the department of promotion and development of media projects for the broadcaster, explained that all the footage comes with multilingual scripts and shotlists.

She added that the website has more than 9,000 news channels already registered and using footage “on a daily basis”.

I spoke to her more at the end of the session about the decision to go down the free distribution route, their attribution methods and to find out whether there are plans in the pipeline to monetise the platform.

There are of course other platforms out there offering video content to journalists, such as the UK-based Video News Agency and also in 2009 Al Jazeera opened up its footage under creative commons licensing.

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App of the week for journalists – 1st Video, to record and edit video on your iPhone or iPad

App of the week: 1st Video

Operating systems: Apple (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad)

Cost: £6.99

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? Shell out for this app and you will have a video editing suite in your pocket.

1st Video allows you to record or import video and edit in multitrack and upload the video to YouTube or transfer it to another device on the same wireless network.

It is used by the BBC 5 Live reporter Nick Garnett, according to a post by him on the BBC College of Journalism site, for broadcasting audio and editing packages. Another app, VC Audio Pro which is made by the same developer, Vericorder, and has also featured as a Journalism.co.uk app of the week will suffice if you want to create an audio only edited report.

Journalism.co.uk has a guide on how to shoot and edit video on an iPhone using 1st Video.

Reviews: It gets 3.5 stars in iTunes App Store

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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#jpod: How journalists can use SMS to engage with the audience

Three quarters of the world’s population has a mobile phone and text messaging has become ubiquitous.

This podcast takes a look at how journalists can connect with sources, communicate with audiences, gather tips and crowdsource information using SMS, which is used by more than 80 per cent of Europeans who have a mobile phone.

A session on how to architect the SMS newsroom took place at the Mozilla Festival in London at the weekend.

Journalism.co.uk technology correspondent Sarah Marshall attended and caught up with the four speakers: Jim Colgan, who was digital editor and producer at WNYC radio in New York when the station created this award-winning crowdsourced SMS snow map and who is now working with Mobile Commons, a platform which allows you to send and receive text messages; Florence Scialom and Amy O’Donnell from FrontlineSMS, the provider of free software to enable you to text large groups of people; and Stevie Graham from Twilio, which allows developers to create voice, VoIP and SMS applications.

The podcast explains how to create a crowdsourced map, set up an anonymous tip line, and has advice from the four SMS experts.

Podcast: Download

You can hear future podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.

*Statistics on mobile use are taken from the mobiThinking site.

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Ariel: BBC launches 2012 local reporter scheme

The BBC this week launched its 2012 Community Reporters scheme, according to an article by in-house magazine Ariel, which will see the trainees ultimately get the chance to pitch an idea to BBC London.

According to the report the 18 trainees include “a minicab driver from Brick Lane, an artist from Hackney and a Marylebone youth worker”.

The new recruits, who are actively involved in their communities and have no paid broadcasting experience or qualifications, will get six days of advice from experts across the BBC, including the College of Production, CoJo and journalists at BBC London.

They will then pitch their ideas to the BBC London editorial team, who will choose which ones to develop for broadcast in a week of production in December.

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Reporters Without Borders urges Iraq authorities to reopen radio station

Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders has urged authorities in Iraq to reconsider the closure of radio station Al-Sada, reportedly the only independent broadcaster in the Al-Qadisiya province.

At the weekend RSF reported that the station was closed down because of music “contrary to local morality”, but that the local branch of the Iraqi journalists’ union had warned that the decision “violated freedom of the press as guaranteed by the constitution”.

Its representative stressed that such a move was unprecedented in Iraqi justice and warned of the dangers that it might present for the media industry.

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