Tag Archives: BBC.co.uk

Newspaper Awards announces nominees

1 Reply

UK regional titles will compete against nationals for this year’s electronic news site and best use of new media prizes at the 2009 Newspaper Awards, according to the full listings on HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk.

Websites for the Belfast Telegraph and Kent Messenger’s Kent Online will go head-head-head with BBC.co.uk, FT.com, Guardian.co.uk, Telegraph.co.uk and Times Online in the news site category.

Candidates for best use of new media include Exeter’s Express&Echo for Kellow’s Bootlaces, FT.com’s Alphaville and the Henley Standard website.

Also of note – the award dedicated to: ‘Most Significant Contribution to Future Newspaper Success’, for which the nominees are:

  • Cambridge News – Video content
  • Crain’s Manchester Business
  • FT Weekend – Re-design
  • Guardian & Observer – Subscriber project
  • ncjmedia – Northumberland strategy
  • ncjmedia – Rising Stars

Elsewhere the International Newspaper Award is dominated by German representatives, with the Augsburger Allgemeine, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung and the Nordkurier all nominated.

The awards are run in cooperation with Fujifilm and the Production Journal celebrating the crème de la crème in newspaper and news media production. The winners will be announced at ceremony on April 22 in London Hilton.

BBC Radio 4 Feedback looks at the BBC News blogs (audio)

Leave a reply

When they started, the BBC didn’t know why or what it was for: Nick Robinson tried out one for the General Election in 2001.

Now Robert Peston is getting a half million hits per day.

Here Louise Adamson from Radio 4’s Feedback programme looks at the role of the BBC’s News blogs.

The BBC journalists interviewed stress that the BBC voice has to be considered, and that blogs still go through careful checks.

If you log in here you can leave your comments below the original post.

BBC enjoys bumper web traffic as banks’ fortunes slide

1 Reply

It might be doom and gloom for Lehman Brothers staff, but at least someone’s gaining from it… Business news sites are reporting excellent traffic over the last few days – not least of all, the Beeb.

According to an article from yesterday’s Ariel, the BBC’s in-house magazine, the bbc.co.uk story from Monday ‘Lehman Bros files for bankruptcy’ was the site’s ‘most popular story’ in its 10-year history with more than 1.7 million page views.

From Ariel:

Boom time for business online as Lehmans goes bust: records fall while Wall Street trembles

Monday saw records tumble at the BBC news website’s business section.
As financial crisis circled the globe, culminating in the closure of Lehman Brothers, the BBC’s business pages enjoyed a record reach with 2.35 million individual readers logging on, double the usual amount.

And it also set a new record for most-read story: ‘Lehman Bros files for bankruptcy’ had more than 1.7m page views, making it the most popular story in the site’s 10-year history.

All told, the section attracted 9.25m page views in a single day.
Tim Weber, the business section’s editor, praised coverage of Lehman Brothers’ demise, which he said was ‘fast, comprehensive and authoritative’.

And he told ariel online: ‘Business and economics stories have always been more popular than most people suspect, but since the start of the credit crunch a year ago our daily reach has soared by about 50%.

‘However, Monday’s meltdown of investment bank Lehman has taken things to a new level.
‘It’s the most fascinating time in my live as a business journalist, but it’s also great to see that our audiences really appreciate our output.

‘Right now, at 1530 UK time on Tuesday, we’ve already reached more than 1.45 million people – it’s bound to be another bumper day.’

BBC offers aggregation service with Topics pages

Leave a reply

Following the review of bbc.co.uk in which the BBC Trust criticised the lack of internal navigation on the site, the Beeb has launched a beta aggregation service.

BBC Topics, which will have automatically updated pages, will cover people, countries or subjects.

“So topics uses a variety of search techniques to create feeds of the latest BBC content from news articles, programmes available to watch on iPlayer, weather forecasts, news videos, country profiles and information from the TV and radio schedules. BBC editors then add in hand-picked articles and features from around the BBC and other websites,” said Matthew McDonnell, portfolio executive, search and navigation, internet group, BBC Future Media and Technology, on the BBC Internet Blog.

The pages will present everything the BBC has on a certain topic, whether it is in or out of the news, McDonnell added.

Topics covered will be partly chosen in relation to the site’s search logs, as well as by what content is available.

Feeds to the pages from external sources are also in development, according to the blog post, which will please the Trust, who said the site should also be acting as a guide for users to outside content.

Only a few topics are being trialled so far, including China, David Cameron, NATO and dogs, but more will be added in the coming months, as will more forms of BBC content.

While we were away… EveryBlock, LoudounExtra, BBC plans and more

Leave a reply

In case you hadn’t noticed, Journalism.co.uk was in Sweden last week covering the World Association of Newspapers annual conference and the World Editors Forum.

So no one misses out, here’s a round-up of what went down while we were away:

Guardian: BBC ends ‘licence fee’ plans for international news website
The Beeb has dropped proposals for subscription-based access to BBC.com

WSJ.com: Analysis of hyperlocal news site LoudounExtra.com
Following the departure of Rob Curley, chief architect behind the Washington Post spin-off site, WSJ asks if the site has found its audience a year into the project.

Editor&Publisher: 94 newspapers join Yahoo partnership
A total of 779 newspapers now have access to the search engine’s advertising technology and HotJobs ads.

Daily Mail: Sir Ian Blair advocates use of celebrity news videos as evidence in drug trials
Footage, such as the Sun’s infamous Amy Winehouse video and of Kate Moss snorting a white substance, should be presented to the jury in such cases, Blair has said.

Guardian: BBC’s new plans for personalisation of website
Plans to create a new rating, recommendation and personalisation system across bbc.co.uk will be put to the BBC Trust, according to the corporation’s latest programme policy statement.

Editor’s Weblog: Washington Post launches online publishing company
The Slate Group will feature a host of digital titles including Slate and The Root, with additional launches planned.

Telegraph.co.uk: Update on revamp of community blogging platform MyTelegraph
Communities editor Shane Richmond says a relaunch date will be announced by the end of next week.

Matthew Ingram: Globe and Mail removes pay wall
Number of subscribers was not enough to maintain the wall, says Ingram, who works for the paper. Some readers remain unconvinced, he says, pointing out one comment: “You can’t shut us out for a few years and then expect us to come back just because it’s free.”

MediaShift: Everyblock releases first special report
The hyperlocal data and news site has mapped information from a recent Chicago police bribery investigation as part of its first special report.

BBC Trust: bbc.co.uk internal search and external linking need ‘major improvements’

2 Replies

The BBC‘s internal website search is ‘not seen as very effective’ by users, according to a review of the site released by the BBC Trust today.

The number of visits to bbc.co.uk pages that were the result of referrals from the site’s internal search engine dropped from 24% during the last three months of 2006 to 19% over the same period in 2007.

In contrast, 70% of search engine referrals came from Google.

“The search just throws everything at you, you would have to spend ages just looking through the pages to find what you need,” one respondent to the Trust’s research said.

The Trust was also ‘disappointed’ with the number of click-throughs generated by external links on bbc.co.uk and criticised the Beeb’s relationship with other content-sharing websites:

“We are also not convinced that BBC management’s ambition to be ‘part of’ the web rather than ‘on it’ by embedding BBC content in other sites (such as Youtube) plays any role in acting as a ‘trusted guide’ to the wider web.  Rather, this is mainly a way of marketing BBC content to those who might not otherwise access it.”

The links to other sites form part of the BBC’s role as a ‘trusted guide’ online.

According to the review, there were 6.7 million click-throughs to external sites from bbc.co.uk in July 2007 – 4.7 million of which originated in the UK.

However, the number of click-throughs from sport and news – the most visited areas of the site – have decreased year-on-year since 2006.

BBC management suggested this decline is a result of the BBC site being seen as a ‘destination’ rather than a way to navigate the web. The Trust argued that issues of accessibility and effectiveness were the problem.

The risk of the BBC becoming a ‘dominant gateway service’ is ‘very much alive’ and requires effective external linking to avoid this, the review stated.

As such the Trust has asked BBC management to submit plans on improving linking and other ways to help users navigate beyond the BBC.

“I don’t evolve, I revolve…”

2 Replies

The BBC’s internet blog yesterday republished an article from its in house magazine Ariel: Revolution Not Evolution: The Birth of bbc.co.uk.

The title instantly reminded me of this scene from the BBC’s own comedy show I’m Alan Partridge, where Alan meets the BBC’s chief commission – it’s about two minutes in (watch out for the language). Adult Search – adult work jobs – erojobs.biz.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEwZ-1s9-SU&feature=related]