Tag Archives: British Broadcasting Corporation

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

    • 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 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.

    ‘Babel-like cacophony drowning out perception’ but new media still developing, says Paxman

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    So, as reported on the main site, and in John Mair’s tribute to the fearsome journalist, Jeremy Paxman collected the inaugural Charles Wheeler Award last night. His Newsnight colleagues had put together a little tribute, which as David Dunkley Gyimah pointed out on Twitter, is a ‘This Is Your Life’ style must-watch. Journalism.co.uk will try and obtain an embeddable link asap.

    In the meantime, enjoy the clip at the end of this post: when Paxman dipped his toes into YouTube waters for Newsnight (which, incidentally, BBC director-general Mark Thompson later confessed to never having seen till that evening: “I had no idea  – I’d missed that”).

    So Journalism.co.uk asked Paxman: you’re a little sceptical about social and new media, then?

    “It’s a joke [his YouTube video – see below]! One of the functions of journalism, seems to me, [is that] it sifts and analyses – and it’s great to have a lot of raw material, but someone still has to sift it to make sense of it,” he said.

    There are occasions, for certain stories, he said, ‘when one spends a lot of time looking at blogs… comments… it’s just time wasted.’

    “We haven’t yet developed a mechanism for synthesising what comes out  – we’re currently at a stage where someone goes to a rally and writes down the comments of everybody there. That’s no way to report an event – it doesn’t tell you very much,” Paxman said.

    “We still need journalists forming perception and analysis of what’s happening – that’s getting drowned out by this Babel-like cacophony. But we’re at a very early stage of development with it. I think there are new things going to happen.”

    And, does he still advise wannabe hacks to go and do something more sensible and worthwhile, like become a brain surgeon?

    “You do it [give advice] with a certain knowledge that those who are determined won’t be put off anyway. But, I think, overall, the prospects in this trade are not good,” he told Journalism.co.uk.

    “Wages are being cut – [there are] apparently respectable newspapers which actually survive on work experience people – and not paid. This is no good! When you’re 21 you don’t think about it. You’ve got to think about it: the longevity of it, [being able to] afford to put a roof over your head and feed your kids etc.

    “It’s always been a young person’s trade I think, but it’s even more that now.

    “I personally believe in it of course – I think it’s a really worthwhile activity. But it is, I think, the case that there are more immediately socially worthwhile things that you could do with your life. I just think these are strange circumstances.”

    Paxman trying out YouTube:

    Why Jeremy Paxman is the new Charles Wheeler

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    Tonight he steps up to get the first ever Charles Wheeler Award at Westminster University from his boss Mark Thompson, the BBC director-general. Paxo is now the worthy wearer of Wheeler’s Crown. Well deserved.

    Charles loved words and using them. So does Paxman. Witness this week, Paxman calling Esther Rantzen a ‘retired television nabob’. Ouch.

    It’s what good journalists do; we use words. Charles transformed any film which he reported. I’ve seen very so-so stories become very good watches when reported by Wheeler. Paxman, lest we forget now that he is in a warm studio, was the best film reporter of his generation. Look at some of the films from the Central American frontline 30 years ago. The man learned early.

    Charles liked to cause mischief. All good hacks do. He was once heavily censured by the BBC bosses for being rude to royalty on tour. Did he care? Not a jot! Think Paxman and Blair: ‘Do you and President Bush pray together?’ and my all-time favourite to Shaun Woodward, the new MP for St Helens in deepest Lancashire: ‘Mr Woodward did your butler vote Labour?’ (Woodward is very rich and was parachuted to St Helens. He did have a butler).

    Charles was less the master of the studio than Paxo has become. Charles always looked a mite uncomfortable, Paxo not. A caged animal waiting for its prey. It’s no wonder Gordon Brown refuses to be interviewed by him. Paxo takes Newsnight up a gear when he presents it.

    Both are, to use that wonderful English word, ‘curmudgeonly’. So what? There are too many smiling faces on TV and too many autocuties. Curmudgeons find things out – even if they do not make huge numbers of friends. But then good hacks are loners.

    For all of their similarities (and differences) who can begrudge Paxo the title of King of the TV Journalism jungle? Not me.

    John Mair is a senior lecturer in broadcasting at Coventry University. He produced last month’s Media Society Annual Award Dinner for Jeremy Paxman.

    Note: updated with subbing corrections 21.05.09

    BeatBlogging.Org: ‘UK news regulation stands in the way of newsroom convergence’

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    I’ve provided a guest post for BeatBlogging.org, the US-based site that looks at how to use social networks and other web tools to improve beat reporting. Using examples from various Journalism.co.uk pieces, I argue that it is very difficult to look towards coverged newsroom, under the hybrid regulatory systems with which we operate as UK-based publishers. Thoughts welcomed.

    Read it in full over at the site. Here’s an extract:

    We talk about converging newsrooms of the future that transcend boundaries between online, print and broadcast, but at a very fundamental level that process is impossible in the United Kingdom.

    Martin Belam, information architect for the Guardian, recently emphasized that point in an interview with Journalism.co.uk:

    “In a converged media landscape, it seems odd that [BBC’s] Robert Peston’s blog is regulated by the BBC Trust, [Channel 4’s] Jon Snow’s blog is regulated by Ofcom, and [the Guardian’s] Roy Greenslade’s blog is regulated by the PCC.”

    Now, Martin was actually wrong on the Jon Snow point: Ofcom does not regulate any television Web sites at all. That is to say, the brands which must adhere to a strict code for television content are completely unregulated online. Ofcom advises consumers to make complaints about online content to their Internet service provider.

    The BBC Trust regulates the BBC online; the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) regulates newspapers, magazines and their online content.

    And Stephen Fry, who – at the time of writing — is nearing half a million followers on Twitter? Or Guido Fawkes (aka Paul Staines) who has a loyal readership to rival most newspaper commentators? Well, they govern themselves – unless the law gets involved.

    When the traditional media sectors go online, they’re regulated by their various bodies, and the ‘online-onlys’ only have the courts to worry about. Press publications have a less strict code than broadcasters, but online, broadcasters have more freedom than the press – though they don’t seem to be exercising it.

    In a nutshell, a financial commentator from a newspaper has greater freedom than a financial commentator from a broadcaster, and an independent online-only financial commentator has the greatest freedom of all.

    What happens when a bank crashes? Channel 4 and ITV can theoretically report how they like – online. The BBC must always answer to the BBC Trust. The newspapers must comply with the PCC code. Martin Lewis, of the MoneySaving Expert can, if he so chooses, be a law unto himself.

    Same news and it’s all online but in very different guises. We might think people know the difference, but do they?

    Full post at this link…

    Survey: Financial leaders turning to broadcast channels for news?

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    The financial world’s decision makers are turning to TV channels for their news, according to research from the Global Capital Markets Survey (GCMS).

    CNN International was the most popular news channel amongst these users, the survey suggests, above BBC World, CNBC and Bloomberg, according to a press release.

    There’s a full breakdown of the media sources and their audiences within this sector at this link.

    According to the results, CNN.com and CNNMoney.com were ranked second behind Bloomberg in terms of popularity for news sites – closely followed by Reuters.com, FT.com and WSJ.com.

    The research was conducted by the Think Media Consultancy on a group of senior bankers, chief financial officers and treasurers of the world’s largest financial organisations, over a period between October 2008 and March 2009.

    Jenni Murray: the white chihuahua, her love of Crocs, and a long-lost Barnsley accent

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    The alternative highlights from Jenni Murray’s visit to Brighton yesterday evening:

    (see the story on the Journalism.co.uk for the broadcasting-related quotes)

    Murray, who turned 59 this week, and has presented BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour since 1987, read from her autobiography (‘Memoirs of a Not So Dutiful Daughter’) and answered questions from interviewer Simon Fanshawe and the audience for the Brighton Festival event.

    Many of her anecdotes and references from the evening featured in this piece in the Brighton Argus, ahead of the event.

    • Her apology for her ‘dishevelled’ (she wasn’t) appearance, and dog-hair adorned outfit  – the result of a long car journey with her white chihuahua, Butch, on her lap. The chihuahua then sat on her publisher’s lap at the back of the theatre throughout the event.
    • The quick put-down to interviewer Simon Fanshawe when he mocked her Crocs (she swears by them): “I can change my shoes, you can never grow your hair.”
    • On her mother: Murray’s mother was quicker to criticise her daughter’s outfit than her abilities on TV. “I’d come off the programme [Newsnight] and the phone would ring. I’d say ‘what did you think of the interview with Norman Tebbit…'” Her mother would not have noticed the interview but say, ‘You know that red top you had on? You’ve quite high colour. Your eyes are your best feature, and your fringe is a bit long…’
    • On becoming her mother [at times]: “If I hadn’t pushed him [eldest son, Edward] to do the chemistry, the physics, the biology, he wouldn’t have made it [as a vet], would he?”
    • On her father: “No-one I have ever met has ever quite lived up to him.”
    • On elocution lessons: With a Barnsley accent ‘I wouldn’t have had a chance of being a broadcaster [at that time].’
    • On John Humphrys: “I taught him everything he knows. He had never done radio [before the Today programme].”
    • On not being a boy: “Really she [Murray’s mother] would have been much happier if I had been a boy.” Murray’s mother told her: ‘until you were born you were David Robert’. When Murray’s first son was born, she says, the proud grandmother arrived at the house, scooped the baby up and exclaimed, ‘at last my boy!’
    • On her changed taste in fashion: As a teenager, “my eye make-up [was] like Dusty Springfield’s, but I did take it off [at night]; she [Springfield] didn’t – she confirmed that when I met her.”