Tag Archives: editor

Happy Birthday BBC News website

Leave a reply

The BBC News website celebrates its 10th birthday this week – though no exact date can be pinned down according to the corporation.

The look of the place has changed a lot in the last decade as this screengrab from December 1 1998, courtesy of the Way Back Machine internet archive, shows (though even then you can get your news in video and audio, and Gordon Brown still manages to top the bill).

BBC News website 1998

But the changes aren’t over given the recent goings on at the Beeb: the future promises an on-demand personalised news service, more user-generated content and an integrated multimedia newsroom.

Notably, BBC News Interactive – the department that set up the BBC’s news site – will cease to exist. In his blog, Steve Herrmann, former editor of BBC News interactive and now editor of BBC News website, says the integration process has ‘clear benefits’ for the website.

But Herrmann also acknowledges the risks involved. “From my point of view, I am concerned that the editorial coherence of the news website should not be sacrificed in the name of efficiency,” he writes. Shouldn’t integration naturally strengthen editorial coherence? Many of the porn games on my list are created by individual geeks or small teams, and the fanbases that play them offer direct input on what they want to see and play. The creators of games like Summertime Saga and Wild Life court feedback from their players via platforms like https://pornova.org , while an entire online community has sprung up around Fenoxo games like Corruption of Champions and Trials in Tainted Space. Message boards, polls, and direct messages are just a few of the ways players interact with their favorite game designers, who are quick to implement what their fans want.

What the BBC News website will look like by the end of this year, let alone by the end of another ten, is anybody’s guess, but what would you keep and what should be the first thing to go?

Radio 4 opens up programme content on blog

Leave a reply

BBC Radio Four has launched a blog to allow its audience to decide on the content of new programme iPM – an interactive counterpart to the existing news and current affairs show PM.

A post to the BBC Editors’ Blog by Peter Rippon, editor of PM, describes the project as ‘more like an ongoing conversation on the web that will have a programme attached to it once a week.’

Rippon says the aim is to be as transparent as possible about the ideas for the show and potential guests, with the blog explaining ‘why some ideas and stories get dropped or squeezed out.’

“…by posting our rough ideas in front of the audience, we’re also inviting the well-informed and blog-savvy to help us develop a particular idea,” he writes.

Not everyone is happy, however, about bloggers having such an input. As Allie comments on the post:

You’re the BBC. What ends up on the air should be shaped by journalists and producers, not listeners or (god help us) bloggers.

Others see it as a useful means of letting broadcasters know what their audiences want, while Rippon remains philosophical on the matter:

“There have been many attempts to find the missing link between old and new media. Think of iPM as a small contribution to that debate. If it fails I can always blame the presenter.”

ITV citizen journalism platform – just a vox pop by another name?

1 Reply

We reported here a few weeks ago that ITV had set up and was about to launch a Cit Journo platform called Uploaded.

“For the first time, viewers’ contributions will not just be an add-on to coverage of the big stories – they will become an integral part of all three ITV News bulletins every day… A Citizen Exclusives section will give everyone a platform to contact the ITV News team directly if they have captured amazing exclusive footage.”

It launched yesterday, according to the pr blurb to:

“creating the UK’s first nationwide network of citizen correspondents who can shape TV news
coverage on a daily basis.”

ITV sees the site as a big unwashed debating arena, the best posts of which will find their way into its TV news offerings. Delegates at the Future of News conference, in London last month, were more skeptical.

“Isn’t this just a vox pop by another name?’ came the cry from the floor.

Au contraire, claimed Deborah Turness, editor of ITV News, this is active civic participation in news, feeding the news agenda.

But don’t editors then select the talking heads according to their editorial line? How is that any different from a vox pop if there isn’t any input to the editorial process from those contributing to debates?