“It’s hard enough to write for the web and meet the guidelines for concise, scannable, and objective content. It’s even harder to write web headlines,” writes Jakob Nielsen, the useability expert.
“(…)For several years, I’ve been very impressed with BBC News headlines, both on the main BBC homepage and on its dedicated news page. Most sites routinely violate headline guidelines, but BBC editors consistently do an awesome job,” he continues.
(via PoynterOnline)
Last year BBC News online trialled technology from Apture, which created pop-up windows to wikipedia pages, youtube and relevant articles from certain hyperlinks.
Now Reuters is using the the feature – predominantly on its blogs – to do the same, linking to images, maps, Twitter updates, videos and relevant articles.
The service ‘helps Reuters.com enhance its content with intuitive links to related information available on the Web, without directing reader traffic away from Reuters.com’, says a release from Apture.
You can see it in the screengrab below or take a look at Apture in aciton on the Reuters Fan Fare blog.
The Beeb ended its Apture trial – despite positive feedback – but with the Washington Post and Reuters using it, let’s see what happens.
Nick Jones, former BBC political correspondent, joined panellists Iain Dale and Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes) at the Foregin Press Association yesterday, where the impact of new media on newsgathering and reporting was discussed.
Further to Dale’s comments on blogging and political journalism, Jones added that audio and video material appearing on newspaper websites is ‘stretching journalism in the way it should be stretched’.
“Newspapers are making money out of video and audio. They are buying up exclusive material obtained in dubious circumstances – but it is getting good ratings,” said Jones.
“The Guardian was prepared to take risks the BBC would not have contemplated,” said Jones, who claimed the BBC would have had to apply a ‘whole host’ of tests to the video evidence.
The code for newspapers is much simpler, he suggested: “They just need to ask, is it in the public interest?”
Muslimah Media Watch, a blog authored by Muslim women, critiques how images of Muslim women appear in the media and popular culture.
In this post, the BBC receives praise for an article about Kurdish women football teams. The writer, Faith – while picking up on one ‘foul point’ – says this piece, like other recent BBC stories, doesn’t ‘rely on stereotypes of Muslim women and automatically connect Islam with misogyny.’
BBC Newsnight star presenter Jeremy Paxman is never known to mince his words and he certainly didn’t when receiving the Annual Media Society Award last Thursday evening in London. The ‘Great Inquisitor’ attacked the BBC, saying that it was ‘in a vortex of its own making’.
He criticised cuts on his own programme – “people at the top are no longer interested in what we do or how we do it” – to the audience that included Helen Boaden, BBC director of news, Stephen Mitchell, her deputy, and no less that six former or present editors of Newsnight.
Paxman was stinging in his criticism of the cuts in the media outside the BBC as well, saying it was ‘now cheaper to print opinion that the truth’; and that some major American papers no longer had a full-time correspondent or even a stringer in London. He described the current situation as ‘depressing’.
Paxman, who has now presented Newsnight for 20 years, was the subject of paeans of public praise from his bosses past – including Robin Walsh, who gave him his first reporter’s job in BBC Northern Ireland 35 years ago – and who had the audience reeling, with his tales of ‘Paxo’ interviewing the Appointments Board – and Peter Barron, the last Newsnight editor who had forced Paxman into the digital 21st century and to do a (short-lived) weather forecast on the programme.
The tributes were all warm, especially from his most high profile victim former Home Secretary, Michael Howard, of whom Paxman famously asked the same question 12 times in 1997. Time had healed the rift.
It was not all downbeat. Paxman said that if he had his time again he would still join ‘our trade,’ and become a journalist, as he had at 23. “I’ve spent my life talking to amusing people. It is an incredible privilege to work with thoughtful, clever, funny people,” he said, saluting the teams who had made it all possible. “There are no solos in television – everything is collaborative. Even the gargantuan egos!”
For this British giant, the basic premises of journalism remain, for what is still the same job. To be good, one needs to be ‘curious’ and have ‘instinct’ and in ‘Paxo’s’ case, plenty of Chutzpah.
(hat tip to @johncthompson for this one) The BBC has asked its audience to send in pictures of local newspaper billboards to show ‘a week in local news’.
The results can be seen in this Flickr group. Favourite billboard so far: ‘Jilted lover kills ex’s fish’.
The UK’s Press Association (PA) has announced a new service – a video wire of raw news footage.
While the association has produced video since 2005, it has never made this content available on a news wire, alongside text and pictures.
Subscribers to the service will be able to edit their own packages from the clips, a release from the agency said – making the cost of the service lower.
Regional newspapers will be offered a free trial of the service, which will feature up to 30 stories a day.
“The video wire is not only a cost-effective solution for news broadcasters, but will also support regional media players at an important stage in their development as multi-platform businesses,” said Tony Watson, PA managing director, in the release.
“As DCMS and Ofcom grapple with the issue of safeguarding plurality of provision in PSB regional television news, we believe the new UK video service could make a significant contribution to the solutions currently under consideration.”
The PA’s launch comes as potential partnerships between the BBC and local media on training and equipment are set to get the go ahead – according to this MediaGuardian report.
The BBC has announced plans to team up with commercial radio groups Global Radio, Bauer Media and GMG, to develop new digital projects for the radio industry – including a ‘a calendar of exclusive digital-only content for listeners on DAB’.
That’s exactly what happened for Al Jazeera journalists Sherine Tadros and Ayman Mohyeldin earlier this year when Al Jazeera English found itself the only major English television broadcaster allowed inside Gaza.
A 12-day ban prevented other Western media networks entering the area – although the BBC used two producers already on the ground. Read this post by the POLIS researcher Nina Bigalke, on Charlie Beckett’s blog, for a fuller context. “If 12 hours are a very long time in the world of journalism, 12 days seem like an eternity,” Bigalke writes.
“To be the only English channel on the ground could be a ‘one-off experience’ during her career, [Tadros] said. While she thrived on being part of the only English-language media team on the ground – ‘everything we did was exclusive’ – Tadros was aware of the responsibility to cover as much as possible for an English speaking audience.”
Now it’s your chance to join in and put your questions to the pair. Visit this site at 2pm (GMT +1). Journalism.co.uk will be putting a series of questions, via CoverItLive, to Tadros and Mohyeldin about their experience. Was it liberating to find themselves without the BBC working alongside? Was it a daunting responsibility?
Leave your own questions in the comments below this post and they will be included in the interview. See you at 2pm (4pm Doha time). You can also submit questions to @journalism_live on Twitter.
UPDATE 15.00 BST: THIS EVENT HAS NOW FINISHED. Thank you for your questions and thoughts. Please leave additional comments on the subject of media coverage in Gaza below this post. If you participated and wish to comment on the use of CoverItLive in this format please send your feedback to judith at journalism.co.uk. Did it seem a good way to present an interview? Was the balance of questions between Journalism.co.uk and users about right? Many thanks in advance for your help.
Last night saw the 2009 Newspaper Awards (nominations for the prizes can be seen here) with BBC News jointly winning best electronic news site alongside Times Online – good work for a non-newspaper.
The other digital accolade went to the Herald Express and thisissouthdevon for ‘Rock Stars’, the paper’s online drive to create a new band; while the Cambridge News scooped best regional paper and The Times was named best national newspaper.
Congratulations to the award winners – a full list of which can be viewed on the awards’ website.