In an interview with the Guardian, BBC director-general, Mark Thompson, said that executives are considering the part- privatisation of the corporation’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide.
Thompson also said that the provision of free BBC online news was ‘utterly non-negotiable’. “I would rather the BBC was abolished than we started encrypting news to stop people seeing it,” he told the Guardian.
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Nuria Leon, a journalist and postgraduate student at the University of Westminster, recently demanded an explanation from BBC director-general Mark Thompson regarding the lack of varied BBC news content from Latin America. You can listen to the encounter here.
Now she needs journalists’ help: for her MA dissertation in media management she wants to find out what journalists think about coverage of Latin America in the UK. [NB: Latin American countries listed here, and UN information on the Americas here.]
So, if you think there is a hole in English-language reportage from that part of the world, please help her out. Here are her questions. Please leave your thoughts below, or email her directly: n.leon at my.westminster.ac.uk.
The narrative is familiar to anyone who has followed the broader technology industry for any length of time – new triumphs over old.
The reality, inevitably, is more complex, more layered, more textured.
Certainly change is disruptive, but old technology rarely disappears completely. Rather it coexists with the new.
Just look around your office if you want proof of that.
You may not use the fax machine but someone does, and you’ve certainly sent a letter or made a call on the land line. Communication is not all mobiles, email and instant messaging.
As it is with technology, so it is with media.
And nothing demonstrates the laziness of the ‘winners and losers’ legend more than the domestic news story of the year – MPs’ expenses. Here we have seen the best of old and new media, one feeding off the other.
Let’s retrace our steps:
What was meant to be a public domain story, put there by a hard-fought freedom of information request, turned into an old-fashioned scoop.
The Daily Telegraph acquired the data and did a first class job poring over the numbers and putting in place an editorial diary for the drip-drip of expenses-related stories.
The first fruits of this were splashed across the front of the paper on Friday May 8 and, by my count, the story set – and led – the news agenda for the next 23 days.
To this point it was only a new media story in the sense that the Telegraph was enjoying an uplift in traffic – one in every 756 expenses-related searches led to the site.
But what the paper was offering was fairly conventional fare. It took others to do some really interesting things with it.
A fine example was work done by Lib Dem activist Mark Thompson who spotted a correlation between the safeness of an MP’s seat and the likelihood that they are involved in an expenses scandal.
Elsewhere, there were mash-ups, heat maps and the rest.
And then the deluge. Parliament released its data – albeit in redacted form – and for the first time the Daily Telegraph was in danger of losing ownership of the story to another newspaper.
True to type the Guardian offered the most interactive experience inviting readers to: “Investigate Your MPs expenses.”
Wired journalist Jeff Howe, the man credited with coining the phrase crowdsourcing, will nod approvingly at this development.
According to one definition Howe uses, crowdsourcing is ‘the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open cal’l.
In this instance the Guardian was taking a task traditionally performed by its journalists (designated agents) and outsourcing it to its readers.
Where the Telegraph did its own number-crunching, the Guardian farmed much of it to a third party, us.
So has the Guardian’s crowdsourcing experiment been a success?
On Sunday the paper boasted that almost 20,000 people had taken part, helping it to scour nearly 160,000 documents. So far so great. But by Wednesday, the number of documents examined by the army of volunteers was still 160,000.
With some 700,000+ receipts and other assorted papers to classify could it be that the Guardian’s efforts were running out of steam?
If they were, this didn’t stop its rival from following the lead.
One Telegraph correspondent may have dismissed those engaged in this kind of ‘collaborative investigative journalism’ as ‘Kool-Aid slurping Wikipedians’, but his paper seemed to take a different view.
By the middle of the week, the Telegraph was offering its far-less redacted expenses documents in PDF form and all its data in a Google spreadsheet, while simultaneously asking readers directly: “What have you spotted?”
Both papers – and the wider media come to that – have enriched our understanding of a complex and sprawling story. What started as a proprietorial scoop is now in the hands of the crowd.
Old media and new coexisting.
Jon Bernstein is former multimedia editor of Channel 4 News. This is the first in a series of regular columns for Journalism.co.uk. You can read his personal blog at this link.
You’ll find the information tucked away on the BBC Freedom of Information site at this link.
Update: Journalism.co.uk wasted a little bit of its time getting the annoyingly inaccessible BBC PDFs into spreadsheet format, but knew that the Guardian’s data people would be doing that too. So we’ll get back to other duties while you have fun with this from the Guardian’s DataBlog: DATA: download the full spreadsheet of BBC executive expenses.
More to follow from Journalism.co.uk, but in the meantime the links you’ll need if you want to play yourself. Some files are missing – BBC Information informs us that there are more to come.
And the individuals:
Mark Thompson’s expenses 2008/09 PDF (63KB)
Mark Thompson’s expenses 2007/08 PDF (47KB)
Mark Thompson’s expenses 2006/07 PDF (48KB)
Mark Thompson’s expenses 2005/06 PDF (44KB)
Mark Thompson’s expenses 2004/05 PDF (42KB)
Mark Byford’s expenses 2008/09 PDF (41KB)
Mark Byford’s expenses 2007/08 PDF (41KB)
Mark Byford’s expenses 2006/07 PDF (42KB)
Mark Byford’s expenses 2005/06 PDF (41KB)
Mark Byford’s expenses 2004/05 PDF (40KB)
Jana Bennett’s expenses 2008/09 PDF (47KB)
Jana Bennett’s expenses 2007/08 PDF (48KB)
Jana Bennett’s expenses 2006/07 PDF (48KB)
Jana Bennett’s expenses 2005/06 PDF (48KB)
Jana Bennett’s expenses 2004/05 PDF (51KB)
Tim Davie’s expenses 2008/09 PDF (47KB)
Tim Davie’s expenses 2007/08 PDF (42KB)
Tim Davie’s expenses 2006/07 PDF (47KB)
Tim Davie’s expenses 2005/06 PDF (41KB)
Erik Huggers’ expenses 2008/09 PDF (39KB)
Zarin Patel’s expenses 2008/09 PDF (42KB)
Zarin Patel’s expenses 2007/08 PDF (42KB)
Zarin Patel’s expenses 2006/07 PDF (45KB)
Zarin Patel’s expenses 2005/06 PDF (40KB)
Zarin Patel’s expenses 2004/05 PDF (37KB)
John Smith’s expenses 2008/09 PDF (44KB)
John Smith’s expenses 2007/08 PDF (44KB)
John Smith’s expenses 2006/07 PDF (44KB)
John Smith’s expenses 2005/06 PDF (46KB)
John Smith’s expenses 2004/05 PDF (46KB)
Caroline Thomson’s expenses 2008/09 PDF (50KB)
Caroline Thomson’s expenses 2007/08 PDF (51KB)
Caroline Thomson’s expenses 2006/07 PDF (51KB)
Caroline Thomson’s expenses 2005/06 PDF (45KB)
Caroline Thomson’s expenses 2004/05 PDF (50KB)
And while we’re about it – here’s the link to the Audit Committee standing orders:
And the Register of interests:
MORE:
Expenses:
General:
Travel and transport:
Journalism.co.uk had been surprised to learn at last month’s Journalism in Crisis event that the BBC used only stringers to cover South America, according to director of news Helen Boaden.
The location of global bureaux ‘is something to do with your colonial past’ she said, adding to comments by BBC director-general Mark Thompson, when he was questioned by an irate audience member on the corporation’s lack of coverage in that part of the world (specifically Latin America).
Audio here:
Does the BBC really have no bureaux in Central and South America? Well, the BBC press office later told Journalism.co.uk, it depends how you define stringers and bureaux.
There is a distinction between ‘newsgathering hub’ bureaux and ‘non-hub’ regional bureaux the BBC spokesperson said. While there are no ‘newsgathering hub bureaux’ in South and Central Americas, there are four regional offices, located in Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Havana. How many in each, Journalism.co.uk asked.
Two in each of the four cities: one producer and one local fixer, both on sponsored stringer contracts with retainers. Other individual stringers cover the rest of the continent other parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, with freelancers working from Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Chile and Jamaica.
It’s an interesting question: where are international news organisations’ bureaux and why? A particularly pertinent one to raise, given the difficulties in accessing material from Iran at the moment. The BBC office in Tehran remains open, but permanent correspondent Jon Leyne has been ordered to leave the country, the corporation reported yesterday.
While the BBC had two producers inside a Gaza office in 2008, it did not have any permanent crew on the ground and this affected its coverage of the crisis at the end of that year, and the early part of 2009.
It was helpful for Al Jazeera to have people already based in Gaza, as its two correspondents told Journalism.co.uk in a live-blog interview in April.
NB: Whether Al Jazeera were the ‘only’ English-language international broadcaster in the area for the 12-day media block is still a bone of contention: a journalist later reminded Journalism.co.uk that his employer, Iranian government-funded Press TV, was also reporting from the region during that period.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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