Tag Archives: BBC

BBC Internet Blog: ‘Microblogging – the Editorial Policy Meeting’

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Last week Journalism.co.uk reported on the BBC’s stance on social media use – in particular of Twitter – by its journalists; and the sometimes blurry divide between personal and professional use.

Writing on the BBC Internet Blog, Roo Reynolds, portfolio executive for social media, BBC Vision, details discussions within the corporation last week about microblogging and editorial policy.

Some very sound points were made:

– offer ‘principles and guidance’, education on the risks and dangers for journalists, but not set of fixed rules of how journalists can use social media;

– “[D]on’t say anything you wouldn’t say on air” – via technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones (@ruskin147).

The BBC’s policy’s on microblogging are due an update, says Reynolds:

“The editorial guidelines will receive an update to give clearer advice on micro-blogging, but it won’t be a clampdown. The guidelines will continue to grow and evolve as new ways to interact with our users are discovered, constantly building on a foundation of the BBC’s values and helping people apply a healthy dose of common sense.”

Full post at this link…

How Westminster students covered last week’s Journalism in Crisis conference

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I got a peek behind the stage curtain last week, at the University of Westminster / British Journalism Review Journalism in Crisis conference (May 19/20). Geoffrey Davies, head of the Journalism and Mass Communications department, gave me a mini-guided tour of the equipment borrowed for the event – it allowed the live-streaming of the conference throughout; a real bonus for those at home or in the office.

Jump to video list here (includes: Mark Thompson / Nick Davies / Paul Lashmar / Boris Johnson and a host of academics and journalists from around the world)

The Journalism.co.uk beat means that we cover a fair few industry and academic conferences, and so we get to compare the technology efforts of the hosts themselves. While Twitter conversation didn’t flow as much as at some events (not necessarily a negative thing – see some discussion on that point at this link) the students’ own coverage certainly made use of their multimedia skills. I contacted a few of the students and lecturers afterwards to find out a few more specifics, and how they felt it went.

“We streamed to the web via a system we borrowed from NewTek Europe, but might purchase, called Tricaster. It’s a useful piece of equipment that is a television studio in a box,” explained Rob Benfield, a senior lecturer at the University, who produced the students’ coverage.

“In this case it allowed us to add graphics and captions downstream of a vision-mixer. It also stores all the material we shot in its copious memory and allowed us to store and stream student work, messages and advertising material of various sorts without resorting to other sources.

“Some of our third year undergraduates quickly mastered the technology which proved to be largely intuitive. We streamed for two solid days without interruption.”

Conference participants might also have seen students extremely diligently grabbing each speaker to ask them some questions on camera  (making Journalism.co.uk’s cornering of people a little bit more competitive). The videos are linked at the end of this post.

Marianne Bouchart, a second year at the University, blogged and tweeted (via @WestminComment) along with postgraduate student, Alberto Furlan.

“We all were delighted to get involved in such an important event,” Bourchart told Journalism.co.uk afterwards. “It was an incredible opportunity for us to practice our journalistic skills and gave to most of us a first taste of working in journalism. I couldn’t dream of anything better than to interview BBC director general Mark Thompson.

“We worked very hard on this project and we are all very happy it went on that well. My experience as an editor managing a team of journalists to cover the event was fantastic. We encountered a few scary moments, some panic attacks, but handled the whole thing quite brilliantly in the end – for inexperienced journalists. I can’t wait to be working with this team again.”

A sample of the Westminster students’ coverage:

If you missed the Journalism.co.uk own coverage, here’s a round-up:

Videos from the Westminster University students at this link. Interviewees included:

  • Paul Lashmar, Is investigative journalism in the UK dying or can a ‘Fifth Estate’ model revitalise it? An examination of whether the American subscription and donation models such as Pro Publica, Spot.US and Truthout are the way
  • Haiyan Wang, Investigative journalism and political power in China —A case study of three major newspapers’ investigative reporting over Chenzhou corruption between April 2006 and November 2008
  • Maria Edström, The workplace and education of journalists – myths and facts
  • Shan Wu, Can East Asia produce its own “Al-Jazeera”? Unravelling the challenges that face channel NewsAsia as a global media contra-flow
  • Yael .M. de Haan, Media under Fire: criticism and response in The Netherlands, 1987-2007
  • Esra Arsan, Hopelessly devoted? Turkish journalism students’ perception of the profession
  • Professor James Curran, ‘Journalism in Crisis,’ Goldsmiths College
  • Marina Ghersetti, Swedish journalists’ views on news values
  • Igor Vobic, Multimedia news of Slovenian print media organisations: Multimedia on news Websites of delo and žurnal media
  • Anya Luscombe, The future of radio journalism: the continued optimism in BBC Radio News
  • Tamara Witschge,The tyranny of technology? Examining the role of new media in news journalism
  • Juliette De Maeyer, Journalism practices in an online environment
  • Colette Brin, Journalism’s paradigm shifts: a model for understanding long-term change
  • Dimitra Dimitrakopoulou, Crisis equals crisis: How did the panic spread by the Greek media accelerate the economy crisis in the country?
  • Matthew Fraser, Why business journalism failed to see the coming economic crisis
  • Michael Bromley, Citizen journalism: ‘citizen’ or ‘journalism’ – or both?
  • Vincent Campbell, ‘Citizen Journalism’: A crisis in journalism studies?
  • Martin Nkosi Ndlela, The impact of technology on Norwegian print journalism
  • James S McLean, The future of journalism: Rethinking the basics
  • Mathieu Simonson, The Belgian governmental crisis through the eye of political blogging
  • Nick Davies, freelance journalist and author of Flat Earth News
  • Boris Johnson, Mayor of London
  • Jonathan Coad, partner at Swan Turton solicitors
  • Mark Thompson, BBC director-general

    • PDA: B2B ‘news marketplace’ launches for UK

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    Beamups, a website where news organisations and producers can sell unused or archived footage, has launched in the UK.

    The site launched in beta in the Middle East in April and has established deals with the BBC, Al Jazeera and ABC.

    Content is sold with 40 per cent of the fee going to Beamups.

    Full post at this link…

    12 hours worth of radio interview tips from @NewsLeader

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    On May 27, from 8am to 8pm, @NewsLeader aka Justin Kings, tweeted tips from BBC and commercial broadcasters as ‘a day of advice aimed at producing better interviews’. Any tip without a credit before it was Kings’ own advice. His media consultancy can be found at Newsleadermediaconsultancy.com. Previous radio tips appeared here (for radio) and here (for news editors).

    Update: We followed them via this post, but we’ve now collected all the tweets via TweetPaste and reproduced them here for your enjoyment. Apologies for the occasional ugly bits of code: TweetPaste doesn’t seem to like &s and speech marks.

    BBC NEWS: Consumer Council paid for NI magazine article

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    Publically funded body, the Consumer Council, paid £1,730 for an article on its outgoing chief executive, Eleanor Gill, to appear in Northern Ireland’s Agenda magazine, the BBC reports – raising questions of editorial independence and the use of taxpayers money are raised by this.

    But, says Rick Hill, chairman of the Consumer Council:

    “It’s the Consumer Council’s role to make the consumer voice heard and make it count.

    “We choose various methods to communicate that voice, one being buying editorial space in professional, trade or business magazines.

    “The Consumer Council negotiated an annual block fee with Agenda NI of £7,415 in April 2008 to submit five articles over a 12-month period.”

    Full story at this link…

    All-day interview tips from @NewsLeader – Wednesday 27th May

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    Tomorrow, from 8am to 8pm, @NewsLeader aka Justin Kings, will be tweeting tips from BBC and commercial broadcasters as ‘a day of advice aimed at producing better interviews’.

    “Journalists from BBC Radio 1 and the World Service, editors from Sony nominated Beacon Radio and Jack FM, and BBC local radio are amongst the contributors,” Kings, who runs the media consultancy NewsLeader, told Journalism.co.uk.

    “I think it’s exciting because it’s rare that people from BBC and commercial sectors get to share best practice with each other,” Kings said. “It’s not too late to share tips via @newsleader,” he added.

    Mad to start freelancing in the recession? I’ve been carrying the foetus of freelancing

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    One really great thing about freelancing through a recession is that you don’t have to worry about being made redundant. Of course, you’re at the mercy of budgets as much as the next journo, but there is something to be said for being your own boss and not having to worry about that steely possibility that you could soon be facing a life-changing moment.

    It’s not that life-changing moments are necessarily a bad thing (indeed, it was a spate of redundancies at a previous job that kicked me into my best career move to date) it’s just that they are a usually very stressful – especially when the control of your life is taken out of your own hands.

    Which brings me onto my next point – control. I’ve been freelancing now for a good nine months. Indeed – and bear with me on this one – that leads rather splendidly to an analogy: I’ve been carrying the foetus of freelancing, and I’ve now given birth. Because the truth is, I’m loving it. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve been lucky to get enough work to see me through, perhaps it’s that I’m not in a stuffy office with anyone breathing down my back, perhaps it’s because I can cook lunch rather than chow down on a squashed sandwich, or perhaps it’s just the fact that for the most part, I’m in control.

    I decide what time I get up, what time I finish and what time I (note the recurring theme here) lunch. Freelancing also releases you, to some extent, from the bureaucracy and politics of the office. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression here – for, as my previous posts will testify, there is a certain amount of being ignored, late payment and managing your own (yawn) tax involved, not to mention the development of RSI from refreshing the inbox obsessively – but on the upside, at least you can blip while you process your expenses.

    In other news, I was asked to go on the Radio Kent breakfast show again to talk about the rise in popularity of ethnically diverse restaurants – another nice little foray into broadcast journalism, and I was impressed by investigative journo-flick State of Play. Aside from discovering that Russel Crowe has definitely grown on me, I liked the way it reflected the conflicted but semi-dependent relationship between print and online journalism – and the fact such a high profile Hollywood thriller was adapted from a BBC series.

    Rosie Birkett is a freelance journalist and sub-editor who specialises in food, hospitality and travel. She can be contacted on rosiebirkett1 at hotmail.com. She also blogs at thelondonword.com and at fiftyfourfoodmiles.wordpress.com. You can follow the series ‘Mad to start freelancing in the recession?’ series here here.

    Do you freelance? Get in touch with your own experiences: laura or judith@journalism.co.uk.

    Telegraph.co.uk: BBC spends £17.5m on staff bonuses

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    The BBC paid £17.5 million in bonuses to a total of 9,777 staff, according to figures obtained under the Freedom of Informaton act.

    The overall figure for bonuses was less than in previous years, however. A pay freeze for senior executives at the corporation was announced in November last year.

    Full story at this link…

    BBC Question Time engages with Twitter #bbcqt

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    The BBC current affairs programme Question Time has started watching the online debate around a Twitter hashtag, #bbcqt, that has become popular over the last several weeks. A hashtag is a way for Twitter users to create a debate around a particular topic.

    During the May 14 edition of Question Time, which was dominated by questions around MPs’ Expenses and described as the most vigorous Question Time ever, there were around 3,000 Tweets during the one hour run of the programme.

    Different people have used the hashtag in the past, including Mark Littlewood, who runs a blog called ‘Mark Reckons’ (@markreckons), and Marc Knobbs, who posted about the hashtag back in early March this year.

    On a different note, a dedicated live blog even existed for a short time in 2007, focusing on text messages received by the programme.

    Now the makers of the programme have created a Twitter account @bbcqt, and will be watching the online debate as a first ‘unofficial’ step.

    You can read more information about the tools that are useful for following this volume of Twitter Traffic, and a more detailed account of the development of the Twitter #bbcqt debate, in my piece “BBC Twestion Time Takes Off with bbcqt hashtag: 3000 Tweets in one Hour“, on the Wardman Wire.

    Matt Wardman edits the non-partisan Wardman Wire group blog which covers politics, media and technology. He is @mattwardman on Twitter, and mattwardman AT gmail DOT com on email.

    What was that Boris? Carve up the licence fee?

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    Last of the blog posts from last night’s Charles Wheeler award speeches, but just to share with you a question from London Mayor, Boris Johnson, to BBC director-general, Mark Thompson. Over to you, Boris:

    “I really wish I hadn’t decided to ask this question.

    “I love the BBC and I’m a big beneficiary from the BBC, but I have to say listening to your [Thompson’s] critique, I thought you were showing some sort of guilt about what the BBC website is doing to other commercially operated websites, you know, run by newspapers and you were trying to say the BBC might paddle it, that guilt, by sharing resources online (…) I understand it would be a very good way forward.

    “I don’t quite know how it’s going to work. I wonder if the simple solution might well be to carve up the licence fee and give a slice of it to the Sun, some to the Daily Mail…”

    Thompson answered, to paraphrase, that it probably wouldn’t work very well.

    A little more fully: there are countries where they’ve tried that, said Thompson. And the problem is, he said, that if you’re not careful, the ‘subsidy you need’ gets a bit bigger every year; and secondly, as a public service broadcaster one would ‘begin losing the critical mass’ in terms of the organisation’s culture, calibre of the output and public accountability.