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. Continue reading →
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.
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.
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.
The New York Times published an interesting article yesterday (30 October) on potential changes facing the Arab television news market, looking at the impact of both the Arab Spring and the impending influx of new providers, national and local.
As author Eric Pfanner writes, the area is “poised for a shot of new competition” with two 24-hour news channels in the pipeline: Alarab from media company Rotana, to be run in partnership with Bloomberg and Sky Arabia, to be launched by BSkyB in spring next year.
As well as this, following the uprisings across the Arab world, the industry may start to see more local media and new channels opening up, he adds.
One reason that news providers like Al Jazeera attracted such a large following was that they were beyond the control of authoritarian regimes in countries like Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, where governments kept the local media on a tight leash.
Now that those regimes have fallen, the local news media are moving toward greater openness, and new channels providing news and commentary on current events have sprung up.
This could eventually undermine the audience for so-called pan-Arab channels beamed in from outside via satellite, analysts say.
Bloomberg’s decision to make their TV content available to any iPad user sets an extremely innovative precedent in a TV world dominated by [US cable television] network-MSO relationships.
Lost Remote goes on to explain:
While the app’s main focus is video, users can also get live market data and related news for companies mentioned in videos. You can customize Bloomberg’s familiar scrolling ticker.
Other added features include the ability to watch in landscape or portrait, download videos for offline viewing, search the content library, schedule reminders for upcoming shows, and share via social networks.
The AFP Foundation will give away 25 laptops to journalists in developing countries or working in exile in a collaboration with Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
In a press release French news agency AFP said the computers will go to journalists “facing particular hardship”. They will be given to RSF on Friday.
Jean-François Julliard, secretary general of RSF added:
We are grateful to the Foundation for its contribution to press freedom. Computers represent independent information which can be passed on and shared. We thank AFP for its support.
David Frost’s memorable encounter with Richard Nixon in 1977 has been voted the best broadcast interview of all time by readers of the Radio Times.
The magazine held a poll in conjunction with the BBC College of Journalism’s Art of the Interview season, asking readers to vote on a shortlist of around 50 interviews.
The Frost/Nixon interview came first by a decent margin, winning 19 per cent of the vote. In second place was Kirsty Young’s 2009 Desert Island Discs interview with Morrissey, which received 12 per cent of the vote.
Ken Clarke’s calamitous interview with Victoria Derbyshire earlier this year – in which he appeared to suggest that some types of rape were less serious than others – was in third place, and Jeremy Paxman’s famous 1994 interview with Michael Howard, in which Paxman asked an evasive Howard the same question 12 times in a row, was fourth. Skip to around 3:50 to see Paxman embark on his quizzing Odyssey.
The full list:
David Frost/Richard Nixon (1977) 18.6%
Kirsty Young/Morrissey, Desert Island Discs, Radio 4 (2009) 11.6%
Victoria Derbyshire/Ken Clarke, Radio 5 Live (2011) 10.8%
Jeremy Paxman/Michael Howard, Newsnight, BBC2 (1997) 7.8%
Becky Milligan/Anthony Steen, The World at One, Radio 4 (2009) 6.5%
Melvyn Bragg/Dennis Potter, C4 (1994) 5.5%
Michael Parkinson/Muhammad Ali (1971) 4.8%
Martin Bashir/Princess Diana, Panorama, BBC1 (1995) 4.6%
Diana Gould (Nationwide viewer)/Margaret Thatcher, BBC1 (1982) 4%
Sian Williams/PC David Rathband, Broadcasting House, Radio 4 (2010) 3.2%
Michael Parkinson/Emu (1976) 2.8%
Bill Grundy/Sex Pistols, Today, ITV (1977) 2%
Jon Snow/Alastair Campbell, Channel 4 News (2003) 1.7%
John Freeman/Gilbert Harding, Face to Face, BBC TV (1960) 1.4%
Gordon Wilson – Enniskillen (1987) 1.2%
Paxman Meets Hitchens: a Newsnight Special (2010) 1%
Owen Bennett Jones/Michael Caine, The Interview, BBC World Service (2011) 1%
Michael Parkinson/Meg Ryan, BBC1 (2003) Awkward 0.9%
Jon Snow/Zac Goldsmith, Channel 4 News (2010) 0.8%
Jeremy Vine/Gordon Brown, Radio 2 (2010) 0.7%
Katie Couric/Sarah Palin, CBS (2008) 0.7%
Tom Bradby/William & Kate, ITV News (2011) 0.7%
Graham Norton/Lady Gaga, The Graham Norton Show, BBC1 (2011) 0.6%
Robin Day/Japanese Foreign Minister, ITN (1959) 0.6%
Russell Harty/Grace Jones, BBC (1981) 0.6%
Robin Day/John Nott (1982) 0.6%
Oprah Winfrey/Michael Jackson (1993) 0.6%
Melvyn Bragg/Francis Bacon, South Bank Show, ITV (1985) 0.6%
Baroness (PD) James/Mark Thompson, Today, Radio 4 (2009) 0.6%
Adam Boulton/Alastair Campbell, Sky News (2010) 0.5%
David Frost/Kenneth Tynan & David Irving (1968) 0.4%
Hugh Stephenson & James Bellini/Sir James Goldsmith, The Money Programme (1977) 0.3%
Paula Yates/Michael Hutchence, Big Breakfast, C4 (1994) 0.3%
Peter White/Christopher Reeve, No Triumph No Tragedy, Radio 4 (1999) 0.3%
Dan Rather/Saddam Hussein, CBS (2003) 0.3%
Jeremy Paxman/Mark Thompson, Newsnight, BBC2 (2010) 0.3%
Redhead/Nigel Lawson, Today, Radio 4 (1987) 0.2%
Jenni Murray/Monica Lewinsky, Woman’s Hour, Radio 4 (1999) 0.2%
Ruby Wax with Jim Carrey, BBC1 (2003) 0.2%
Fern Britton/Tony Blair, Fern Britton Meets, BBC1 (2009) 0.2%
Piers Morgan/Cheryl Cole, Life Stories, ITV1 (2010) 0.1%
Brian Oprah Winfrey/Tom Cruise (2005) 0.1%
John Wilson/Bob Geldof, Meeting Myself Coming Back, Radio 4 (2011) 0.1%
Adam Boulton/George & Laura Bush, Sky News (2008) 0%
Jenni Murray/Sharon Shoesmith, Woman’s Hour, Radio 4 (2009) 0%
Inspired by the BBC College of Journalism’s Art of the Interview season, the Radio Times is calling for people to vote for the greatest broadcast interview of all time.
Mark Rock, CEO of Audioboo. Photo by Kate Arkless Gray.
Since it launched in 2009, Audioboo has become widely used by journalists and so-called citizen reporters. You can add a picture and geolocate your Audioboos and simply engage with the community or use it as a audio player in a blog post.
Stephen Fry’s love of the audio recording and sharing platform, as well as the committed community of users have helped to cement it as a popular tool for journalists, and app on the reporter’s phone.
The Guardian listed the top 10 most-listened-to Audioboos back in June. We have been finding out about the latest developments by speaking to Mark Rock, CEO and founder, about Storify, the riots, Libya, its API and his thoughts on “friendly competitor” SoundCloud.
How has Audioboo developed, particularly now Audioboos can be added to Storify stories?
Part of the reason behind Audioboo is that the spoken word has been a really neglected area on the internet. All the innovation has been around music when it comes to audio, and the spoken word is a really evocative and emotional medium for reporting stories. If you just look at the Audioboo trending lists today probably several of the most listened to clips are from Libya.
What we set out to do was to make it as easy as possible for people to report or tell the stories or share an experience. Part of the deal with Storify is to be able to integrate that in a journalistic medium for not only reporting a story but also retaining it for future reference and use.
How was Audioboo used during the riots?
The riots were really interesting in that most of the journalistic output, so the Guardian, the Telegraph, Sky News, were using Audioboo to rebroadcast stuff they had already done.
I think where it really came into its own was people on the ground, with their mobile phones actually recording their experiences and some of the recordings are quite incredible in terms of what you can hear in the background: the riots, the sirens and fires blazing.
It’s a technological experience that even five years ago was not possible. And the audio was uploaded in two, three, four, five minutes of the recording being made and traditionally that would be a day or two days later.
And Libya?
We’ve seen the same in Libya. There are stories there which would probably would not get into a traditional radio broadcast. Very powerful stories, a lot of them done by non-journalists.
There’s a fantastic blogger called Libya17 who phones people up from America, phones people up in Tripoli and throughout Libya, and gets them to recount their stories live and then puts them up to Audioboo [you can hear the Audioboos from feb17voices here]. It’s a fantastic social record, I think.
You’ve opened your API. What are you hoping will come of that?
Even though we have mobile apps and a website, we really see ourselves as a platform to be used and abused.
Part of the Storify use was them accessing our API and just making it very easy for people to drag Audioboos into a Storify story.
We have a public API which does everything that we do so you can pull down clips, search, record, playback. All of that is out there now.
What we have done recently is a couple of things on the mobile front. There is an iPhone plugin. We have taken all our code for recording and playback and put it into a library for iPhone, which if you are an iPhone developer takes you about 20 minutes to integrate into an existing app. That’s been used by about four or five news outfits in Germany and Absolute Radio in the UK has incorporated it into three of its apps. It’s essentially a new way of citizen reporting or radio phone-in but with metadata and photos with location and tags.
What we also did recently is we open-sourced the code for our Android app. Android is a really difficult platform to support when you are a small company because a HTC works differently than a Motorola etc. We’ve actually stuck the entire codebase at github.com so that other developers can continue working on it.
Where do you see Audioboo in relation to SoundCloud?
SoundCloud has actually been going a year longer than us and I know [founders] Alex [Ljung] and Eric [Wahlforss] really well so we are friendly competitors.
SoundCloud is a fantastic system, a lovely website, lovely embed tools but it is 99 per cent music. Alex is a sound guy, loves that, and that shows in the product.
Where Audioboo works is in the spoken word. We’ve always been primarily about that.
Hopefully they can coexist. I know SoundCloud is looking to push much more into other areas of audio. But I think where we excel is on the stories that audio allows people to tell. Up until now that’s been news stories so we’ve been known as a news platform. We’re rapidly going to push out into other areas, whether its musicians talking about their music or sports people talking about their training, and we should see the result of that fairly soon.
Have you any plans to change the price and accounts structure?
We have a five-minute limit for free accounts. Hopefully soon we are launching a 30-minute account to appeal to podcasters. We think we can convert a good proportion of users to a paid service and that is going to be £50-a-year and with that you get additional stuff like a better iTunes listing and the ability to post to Facebook pages.
And we have our professional service which is used by BBC London, Absolute and Oxfam, which is much more about the curation and moderation of other people’s content.
Audioboo and SoundCloud have some differences when it comes to the player. Are you planning any developments to yours in the near future?
The commenting on the [SoundCloud] audio player is nice and I think it works for music and I would question as to whether it works that well for news. If I had a bigger team I’d love to have it. SoundCloud is 60 people, we’re five. We have a list of stuff we can do.
Any plans to cope with the problems of iOS native apps (such as the Journalism.co.uk iPhone app) which does not display the Flash Audioboo player in blog posts and news stories?
We currently have a player which, if you have Flash installed, will play in Flash. If you’re on an iPhone or an iPad, it will plays back in HTML5. That’s all in place for the site but where we haven’t got that at the moment is in the embedable player, where you can take the code from the site and put it in your own blog. It’s on a list at the moment. Stay tuned, is all I can say.
Any other developments in the pipeline at Audioboo that we should know about?
We’re continuing to improve the paid product. One of the things we’re doing is bringing back Phone Boo, which allows you to telephone call into the Audioboo website. If you haven’t got a smartphone and you haven’t got access to the web you can just make a telephone call and we record that and put it up on the web. We have partnered with an HD voice telephone provider so if you have an HD enabled phone it will record in infinitely better quality than a telephone call and it also means it integrates quite nicely with Skype.
We launched Boo Mail a couple of weeks ago. That’s the ability to send in a file by email, a bit like Posterous.
And for our Pro users we’re launching pre and post rolls. That is the ability to specify a sting or an ad or whatever you want at the beginning or the end of an Audioboo and that automatically gets stitched on.
