World Service director to Beet.TV: Video is ‘hugely important’ to BBC digital news

Peter Horrocks, Director of the BBC World Service, speaks to digital news platform Beet.TV about the World Service’s online offering.

As well as emphasising that the BBC “remains committed” to a “high level of spend” on its international news offering, Horrocks also speaks about the “huge importance” of online video provision to the BBC.

Horrocks also talks about the importance of social media, both as a source of news and as a content distribution channel through social sharing.

He says: “We know that audiences increasingly trust the news they receive directly from friends and family above the news they receive from international news brands.”

Similar posts:

• Peter Horrocks’ new job as BBC World Service Director
• Viewmagazine hosts ‘vlog butterfly’ for BBC head interview
• Accidental Tweet announces senior BBC appointments (but are now official)
• BBC review of online activities: a better deal for local media?
• MediaPost: Online newspapers – ‘The trusted brands will survive’

2011 Knight Batten journalism innovation awards open for entries

This year’s Knight Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism are now open for entries.

According to guidelines from organiser the J-Lab Institute for Interactive Journalism, the awards recognise “pioneering approaches to news and information” and those entering can submit “journalism content, new journalism processes or ideas, or tools or new applications that promote the information needs of communities and/or enhance digital engagement”.

The contest is open to all news efforts originating between 1 May  2010, and 6 June 2011.

The winners will be announced at the Knight-Batten Awards Symposium in September 2011, at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

Last year’s grand prize was won by Sunlight Live, an offshoot of US non-profit and think tank the Sunlight Foundation, after it was used to livestream video and aggregate content around a major US healthcare summit.

Similar posts:

• 2012 Online Journalism Awards now open for entries
• Knight News Challenge 2012 ‘networks’ winners to be announced later today #newschallenge #civicmedia
• Finalists of Online Journalism Awards announced
• Awards round-up: Index on Censorship winners; Mind Journalism Awards; Paul Foot nominations call
• PTC calls for entries to New Journalist of the Year Awards 2009

Jonathan Stray: Digital news needs better products, not just emulations of old media

Professional journalist and computer scientist Jonathan Stray argues in this thoughtful blog post that journalism and news organisations should create products to better support civic culture and “the people who are actually changing the world”. He looks at the existing state of product design in journalism and how it could be improved:

Newspaper stories online and streaming video on a tablet are not those tools. They are transplantations of what was possible with paper and television (…) Much of the ongoing future-of-journalism discussion focuses on how reporting needs to change, and rightly so. But that analysis stops short of the user, and how journalism is actually used – or could be used.

Digital news product design has so far mostly been about emulation of previous media. Newspaper web sites and apps look like newspapers. “Multimedia” journalism has mostly been about clicking somewhere to get slideshows and videos. This is a little like the dawn of TV news, when anchors read wire copy on air. Digital media gives us an explosion of product design possibilities, but the envisioned interaction modes have so far stayed mostly the same.

News and journalism “products” need to consider who will be using them and what those users’ expectations will be – news outlets’ current perception of what they are offering and to whom is not matched by users’ behaviour on their sites, the post explains.

Full post on Jonathan Stray’s website…

Similar posts:

• #wef12: What news outlets can learn from magazines on content presentation
• Guardian Technology: Bonnier’s magazine of the future
• Bivings’ top 10 US newspapers: missing the news point?
• Trinity Mirror schedules Ayrshire Post and Paisley Daily Express for revamp
• Talking Biz News: Bloomberg planning new ‘wire within a wire’?

Online news on the rise in Italy

Online news is gaining popularity in Italy, according to a survey cited by the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper blog.

Research by the Mediawatch Journalistic Observatory suggests readers of online daily news outlets has risen to 39 per cent this year. In 2007 only 25 per cent of internet users read online news.

Trust in the information provided by online dailies has also increased from 18 percent to 45 percent in the last three years, the survey revealed. Overall, Italians are spending more time online and 59 percent said they are using social networks, way up from the 12 percent who used them back in 2007, Ansa revealed. Nonetheless, there is still opposition to buy online and only 21 percent trust digital payments.

Similar posts:

• Americans spending more time consuming news, research suggests
• PCUK/Harris Poll: Print copies may help build online subscriptions
• MSN UK study release: Quarter of respondents ‘overwhelmed by the volume of news each day’
• Forty-four per cent of Google News users don’t click through to source, suggests survey
• Fishbowl NY: Americans reject taxpayer-funded journalism idea

New York Times integrated newsroom vid

Beet TV has a nice succinct video piece about the redeveloped and integrated New York Times newsroom – but it did produce it and two other vids for the NYT Company, so you’d expect so.

Regardless, Jim Roberts, editor of Digital News and Jon Landman, deputy managing editor give some some nice little insights into joined-up digital publishing.

Similar posts:

• #followjourn: Dan Roberts/business editor
• WAN 08: Disparities between pay of web and print journalists – a problem all over the world for integrating newsrooms
• The Cutline: NYT to bring together print and online in newsroom restructure
• How the Guardian’s community of commentators contributes to the story
• #Podcast – Apple Newsstand success stories: Future, Dennis and Conde Nast