Some interesting lessons learnt by the BBC News website from last week’s coverage of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, according to a blog post by editor Steve Herrmann.

The site used Tweets which seemed to be reports from Mumbai as part of its live updates page, which also featured news updates and excerpts from correspondents and blogs.

This page has a specific role, explains Herrmann in the post, to provide ‘a running account, where we are making quick judgments on and selecting what look like the most relevant and informative bits of information as they come in’, prior to making more considered reports for the main news items and bulletins.

“These accounts move more quickly and include a wider array of perspectives and sources, not all verified by us, but all attributed, so that in effect we leave some of the weighing up of each bit of information and context to you.”

Referring to one particular tweet about the Indian government attempting to clamp down on Twitter, which many tried to verify at the time, Herrmann asks whether this – and other potentially unverified items – should have been included in the coverage.

Not if it’s not attributed and not if it’s going to appear in a main news item, he says:

“In one sense, the very fact that this report was circulating online was one small detail of the story that day. But should we have tried to check it and then reported back later, if only to say that we hadn’t found any confirmation? I think in this case we should have, and we’ve learned a lesson. The truth is, we’re still finding out how best to process and relay such information in a fast-moving account like this.”

There is an argument for including such reports, whether they come in by Twitter, email or photograph, as means of passing on the information to readers as quickly as possible ‘on the basis that many people will want to know what we know and what we are still finding out, as soon as we can tell them’.

It is clear that with every major news event the site is experimenting and developing its newsgathering and reporting strategy, showing just how flexible and online news organisation needs to be to serve its users at times of breaking news.

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The BBC is running a new campaign advertising its mobile news website. Videos of the ads can be viewed on the BBC The Editors blog, where editor of BBC News website, Steve Herrmann, explains there’s research being done into BBC News users’ news consumption habits.

According to the study, BBC News consumers have a ‘news ecosystem’ constructed from a range of different media. Mobile is a growing part of this ecosystem and is currently predominantly used to access news headlines, major news stories and areas of specific interest.

The BBC’s mobile services overall currently have 3.2 million users a month, according to M:Metrics – a 26 per cent rise between September 2007 and September 2008.

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To complement its liveblogged coverage of election day, which is still going at time of writing, Guardian.co.uk has changed its homepage design to the below:

This is a template that could be used for other major news events. As BBC News online editor Steve Herrmann told Journalism.co.uk earlier this week the election has been a great opportunity for news sites to experiment with coverage and layout, developing features for future use.

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The BBC News and Sport websites have today launched their revamped websites. Both editors admit the sites, which are the results of months of development in response to reader feedback, are works in progress.

It’s not a complete redesign, says Steve Herrmann, editor of the BBC News website, on his blog, but more of a ’site refresh’. Here’s what has changed on both sites according to blog posts from Herrmann and Ben Gallop, head of BBC Sport Interactive:

BBC News

• Wider page layout
• More open design
• New masthead
• Centred pages
• Use of larger images – enabled by the wider page design
• Better incorporation of advertising in international version of the site
• Introduction of embedded audio and video within news pages, with links to this content placed higher on the page
• Cross-platform content – an area of the BBC News site will be created featuring highlights from TV and radio news programmes

BBC Sport

• Wider page layout
• Use of larger images
• Introduction of embedded audio and video within sports pages, with links to this content placed higher on the page
• More prominence for feature content – ‘high profile’ section for original sports journalism content now in middle of the page
• Better incorporation of advertising in international version of site

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The BBC News website celebrates its 10th birthday this week – though no exact date can be pinned down according to the corporation.

The look of the place has changed a lot in the last decade as this screengrab from December 1 1998, courtesy of the Way Back Machine internet archive, shows (though even then you can get your news in video and audio, and Gordon Brown still manages to top the bill).

But the changes aren’t over given the recent goings on at the Beeb: the future promises an on-demand personalised news service, more user-generated content and an integrated multimedia newsroom.

Notably, BBC News Interactive – the department that set up the BBC’s news site – will cease to exist. In his blog, Steve Herrmann, former editor of BBC News interactive and now editor of BBC News website, says the integration process has ‘clear benefits’ for the website.

But Herrmann also acknowledges the risks involved. “From my point of view, I am concerned that the editorial coherence of the news website should not be sacrificed in the name of efficiency,” he writes. Shouldn’t integration naturally strengthen editorial coherence?

What the BBC News website will look like by the end of this year, let alone by the end of another ten, is anybody’s guess, but what would you keep and what should be the first thing to go?

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