Norwich Evening News: An interview with departing head of BBC East Tim Bishop

Leave a reply

Tim Bishop, head of region for BBC East, has spoken about his decision to leave the BBC for his new role as chief executive of the Forum Trust in Norwich.

Bishop, who will take up his new position in June, told Emma Knights at Norwich Evening News:

I feel as I leave the BBC it is in a really good place in lots of ways. Radio Norfolk has now got more local born and bred presenters than it has ever had and it is resolutely and robustly about Norfolk life.

People are very keen to knock the BBC but we would all really miss if it went. I still love it – I see its faults as well but there’s something about it.

A world without the BBC would be a lot poorer.

Bishop has been at the helm of BBC East for ten years. The broadcast region incorporates Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

Bishop was previously editor of Radio Norfolk and later, editor of Look East.

The full interview can be found here.

Guardian to disclose funding arrangements for travel articles

Leave a reply

The Guardian has announced it is to disclose the full details of who paid for journalists’ transport, accommodation and other expenses at the bottom of travel articles.

The new policy has arisen following a recent complaint from a reader about an article in which the reporter’s expenses were covered by environmental campaign group Greenpeace.

The reader said: “In my opinion it crosses an ethical line for purely financial reasons and I would be very interested to learn the paper’s position.”

Guardian deputy editor Ian Katz responded:

I think that in many circumstances it is fine to accept trips funded by governments, NGOs or lobby groups, though in all cases we should declare them at end of the piece. All funded trips should be authorised by a senior editor and the judgment we should make is, ‘What would the reader, armed with the information about how the trip was funded, make of it?’ If the answer to that is that the reader would probably consider it dodgy, or somehow contaminating of our coverage, then we shouldn’t take it.

Readers’ editor Chris Elliott wrote in his column today:

The Guardian is going to take a step further towards openness in the area of travel writing. In future, travel features will specify which aspects of a trip were paid for and by whom at the end of such features. Across the rest of the paper, on each desk, there are plans to log any trips taken, to ensure that such trips are tracked and signed off by a senior editor.

The top 10 most-read stories on Journalism.co.uk, 7-13 April

Leave a reply

1. Newspaper reporter: fifth worst job? US careers study seems to think so

2. How the Texas Tribune is making $5K a month from Google microsurveys

3. Cameron, Blair and Brown to appear at Leveson inquiry, reports say

4. Hearst unveils new ‘tablet-friendly’ women’s magazine

5. BBC Breakfast moves to Salford: Early reaction

6. Hacked Off: Motorman data leaks are ‘inevitable’

7. App of the week for journalists: Byword, a great text editor for iPhone/iPad

8. Johnston Press confirms further editorial mergers

9. Investigative video news channel to launch on YouTube

10. How citizen video journalists in Egypt are ‘pushing at traditional journalism’

#followjourn: @wordsallowed Susan Grossman/journalist and lecturer

Leave a reply

Image by shawncampbell on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Who? Susan Grossman

Where? Susan is a former BBC journalist and magazine editor. She is a travel writer, lecturer in journalism, writing coach and media trainer.

Twitter?@wordsallowed

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips, we are recommending journalists to follow online too. Recommended journalists can be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to Sarah at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

Searchable database: National newspaper circulation figures for March

Leave a reply

The Audit Bureau of Circulation today released audited March circulation figures for national newspapers.

The statistics stated that the Sun on Sunday averaged 2.43 million copies in first full month since launch.

The figures in the searchable database below.

[iframe src=”http://www.journalism.co.uk/uploads/abcmar2012new.html” width=”100%” height=”1000px”]

BBC ‘not expecting any disruption’ during World Service weekend strike

Leave a reply

Picture: copyright BBC

Following a ballot of members, media and entertainment union Bectu has announced that some staff working in the BBC World Service’s network operations will strike for 30 hours this weekend.

Journalists are not taking industrial action.

Bectu warned that “output is set be hit” by the strike but the BBC has this afternoon issued a statement to say it is “not expecting any disruption to World Service programming”.

The union’s dispute with the BBC centres on the corporation’s refusal to allow around 15 staff to join a final salary pension scheme following their transfer of employment from a private company, Babcock Communications Ltd, to the BBC late last year.

Bectu feels demands should be met because it claims some of the staff involved were allowed to keep a final salary scheme when they transferred to Babcock Communications following the privatisation of World Service Transmission Operations in 1997.

Bectu supervisory official Helen Ryan said in a statement:

This is a classic case of staff pension provision being disrupted by contracting out. When these staff were transferred out of the BBC in 1997, the BBC backed their demands for continuing membership of a final salary scheme.

Now, 15 years on, the BBC wants to wash its hands of its responsibilities to deal with the disruption to pension provision which these staff face.

The BBC has said in a statement:

We are disappointed that Bectu members have opted to take strike action … we have only allowed access to whatever pension scheme was open to new entrants at the time.

It would set an unsustainable precedent to allow people transferring into the BBC to enter pension schemes that are now closed to new members.

The industrial action will take place between 3pm on Sunday (15 April) and 9pm the following day. The staff involved route programmes to transmitters around the world.

Journalisted Weekly: Balotelli, hosepipes and the Falklands

Leave a reply

Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for you, the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about. It is run by the Media Standards Trust, a registered charity set up to foster high standards in news on behalf of the public, and funded by donations from charitable foundations. Each week Journalisted produces a summary of the most covered news stories, most active journalists and those topics falling off the news agenda, using its database of UK journalists and news sources.

Balotelli, hosepipes and the Falklands

For the week ending Sunday 8 April

  • Mario Balotelli’s on and off field behaviour drew the attention of the media
  • A hosepipe ban in the South East, 30th anniversary since the start of the Falklands war, and the London Mayor electoral campaign covered quite a lot
  • Amazon escaping a large corporation tax bill, increasing unease in Greece over austerity plans, and the UK just escaped recession last quarter covered little

Covered Lots

Covered Little

Political ups and downs (top ten by number of articles)

Celebrity vs Serious

Eurozone leaders (top ten by number of articles)

No other Eurozone leaders were mentioned in UK press coverage.

Who wrote a lot about…the London Mayoral election campaign

Long form journalism

Journalists who have updated their profile

Andrew Purvis is a journalist for The Daily Telegraph, whilst also being a managing editor at Ultratravel. He has previously worked for The Guardian, Observer – where he was editor of the magazine ‘Life’ – and was section editor at the Independent on Sunday Review.

Kate Ross is a freelance journalist who writes for the International Herald Tribune, the New York Times Global edition, AnyTrip and numerous others. She completed her Masters in Print and Online Journalism from the University of Westminster in 2010. Follow her on twitter @myeagereyes

The Media Standards Trust, which runs journalisted, won the ‘One to Watch’ category at this year’s Prospect Think Tank Awards

Read about our campaign for the full exposure of phone hacking and other illegal forms of intrusion at the Hacked Off website

Visit the Media Standards Trust’s Churnalism.com – a public service for distinguishing journalism from churnalism

The Media Standards Trust’s unofficial database of PCC complaints is available for browsing at www.complaints.pccwatch.co.uk

For the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbe

 

Independent uses Spotify button to add ‘new angle to music journalism’

Leave a reply

The Independent has announced that it has added music service Spotify’s new play button to its site which “means we can add a new angle to our music journalism”.

Writing in a blog post, Jack Riley, head of digital audience and content development for the Independent and i, explains that any website can add the new button which allows readers to stream music without leaving the host site.

For the Independent this means we can add a new angle to our music journalism; as well as adding streamable albums to our album reviews (see Alabama Shakes here), we can embed setlists into our live reviews (Kylie) and singles into our weekly charts. We’ll also be using the player to illustrate features; this piece from Nick Hasted on jazz’s influence on pop music (via Radiohead) is a great example of how the player can really add something to the reading experience.

You can see all of the tracks we’ve used the play button on this page which also explains how the button works. We’re tweeting articles featuring the new functionality with the hashtag #listenwithspotify and results for that hashtag from us are displayed on that page.

 

Newspaper reporter: fifth worst job? US careers study seems to think so

1 Reply

It is not as hard work as being a lumberjack, or as dangerous as working on an oil rig – but a US careers website has published a study claiming that being a newspaper reporter or broadcaster is one of the worst jobs going.

CareerCast.com looked at factors including stress, industry outlook, income levels and the general working environment to build a league table of 200 jobs. Newspaper reporter came 196th, just ahead of dairy farmers and soldiers. Broadcasters came 191st.

The site says: “Both jobs once seemed glamorous, but on-the-job stress, declining job opportunities and income levels are what landed them on our Worst Jobs list.”

One newspaper reporter told the site: “Today’s younger generation doesn’t seem to care about the news, and, if they do, it’s more about celebrities and Hollywood and not what’s going on in their backyards.”

Among the best jobs in the study were online advertising manager and software engineer.

Delayed Kindle edition for Herald set to launch soon

Leave a reply

The Herald in Glasgow is expecting to launch an edition for the Amazon Kindle within the next few weeks, following a disagreement with Amazon about delays in the approval process.

The publisher says on its site:

We will be launching a Kindle edition of The Herald soon and are currently going through the approval process with Amazon.

You may have seen our previous notice on this page where we said that Amazon had told us they were putting on hold the launch of any further newspaper publications on the Kindle. We’re delighted to say though that they have now agreed to get The Herald edition up and running as soon as they can.

The Herald previously said that Amazon had stopped approving newspapers for the Kindle – but this claim was denied in a statement to PaidContent:

We are not always able to immediately launch every publisher who contacts us using our more heavyweight integration method. For publishers that want to add their newspaper onto Kindle in self-service fashion, they can also do so via the Amazon Appstore for Android.