Blog Virgin

The Interactive 'God'

2005-11-28T20:25:00.000Z

Pete Clifton, Head of BBC Interactive

- Pictured receiving an award for BBC News Online

Introduced with the grand title of Interactive God, we all held our breath with anticipation.

However despite his apparent god-like status to the web fanatics of the world, he seemed like a nice, normal chap to me.

Pete began his career in local newspapers at the Northampton Chronicle and Echo - otherwise known as the 'Chronic Error'.

He then worked for news agency Exdale and then the Press Association as Chief Sports Sub, before progressing to become Ceefax editor.

Now head of the biggest, most well-regarded news website in the world, he tells us about the online world.

BBC News Interactive:
- employs 400 people, half of which are journalists
- a £26m budget
- attracts 4 million unique users per day
- has 30 million page impressions per day from all over the world

A bigger system has now been installed for these huge amounts of traffic, especially for 'big news' days such as July 7th.

The Future...

Mobile phones are the next step for on-demand news.

However, the BBC have somewhat missed out on this phenomenon as 80% of mobile phone users know nothing about the BBC mobile phone news service. There will be increased marketing for this over the coming months.

Video is another key feature of the News Interactive service that the BBC is improving.

On the website you can watch news programmes and reports that you have missed by downloading video feeds. This will become a much faster, more widely-accessible service.

BBC Interactive also utilise their 'Public Space' television screens to feed news into train stations.

User-Generated Content (UGC)

This year, there has been a huge increase in 'user-generated content', with events such as Katrina, Tsunami and 7/7 - and the rise in popularity of camera and video phones.

On 7th July 2005, there were:
- 20,000 emails in 24 hours
- 1,000 still images
- 3,000 text messages
- 20 pieces of video
- There are consistent messages calling for material
- On the news site, TV and radio
- Simple ways for people to send it in
- A 'hub' for the user-generated content

Process of UGC turnaround:
- Verify
- Rapidly distribute around the BBC
- Make it central to the coverage
- Label it properly

Making reader platforms
- Emailing comments; forums without editing

The BBC: Creative Futures

- Journalism, drama, music, etc
- Make BBC more accountable
- Nick Robinson - will have a blog on BBC website to take questions from the public.

Personalisation and a Quick Fix?

There will be personalisation of websites so that people can read about subjects about what they want. There will be a desktop ticker to show those subjects interested in with links to more detail.

However this doesn't work for everybody - research has shown that older audiences prefer to have a set news programme with an agenda set for them by the news organisation.

- Podcasting - video of TV or audio of radio programmes downloaded to iPods

- 'On-demand' website will be brought to digital TV, i.e. in-depth news

Creative Future Breakdown

The BBC aims to be:
- Leader in on-demand and 24/7 journalism
- Content more relevant, especially to hard-to-reach audiences
- Help audiences share content and views
- Content to have a bigger impact with audiences
- Stronger culture of openenss, collaboration and courage

In the New Year, the BBC News overhaul should be in full swing.

Watch this space...

Bad Things Happen in 3's

2005-11-16T14:45:00.000Z

And I got mine this week. Rubbishness just followed rubbishness…

1 – Monday: Parking ticket
I received this not because I was parked on double yellows or because I was in a permit-only area; I was on a non-permit stretch of road that I have parked on many times, along with lots of other people.

Alas I had failed to notice the drop-down pavement that I had parked next to; a disabled access pavement. But no, they couldn’t have maybe slipped a note to move my car about 10 inches along the road…instead a harsh £30 penalty fine was slapped on my windscreen with the offence ‘Unneccessary Obstruction’…

2 – Wednesday: Bike stolen
Rubbish. My lovely green Claud Butler bike, that has helped me to speed into shorthand with minutes to spare has gone.

Some hardened crims decided to hacksaw off my ultra-thick chain from next to the Bute Building at university and leave me to walk through 1 million puddles on a daily basis.

3 – Sunday: Extreme train delay
A great end to a weekend at home – sitting on a series of broken trains and buses as Arriva Trains Wales attempted to get us home to Cardiff.

Expected time: 10.59pm. Actual arrival time: 4.35am Monday morning…

However I cannot wallow in self-pity and wingeing for long. Maybe I can draw some good things from this week…

Positive Stuff

1. Parking Ticket
Erm…struggling with this one. I’ll come back to it.

2. Bike theft
a) Less likely to die/be permanently maimed on way to uni…
b) Don’t have to wear/carry around/lose bike helmet every day…
c) Realised I never actually saved that much time after battling traffic, mind-numbingly stupid pedestrians, locking up bike etc…
d) Don’t have to come to class with black puddle splashes up my back…
e) Don’t have to think about the woman next door who keeps shouting at me because my bike rack apparently is making cracks on her side of the wall…
f) OK I’m bored now, and I think I have established that the bike was a bad idea in the first place

3. Train Disaster
a) Got lots of shorthand practise done
b) Read the Financial Times for the first time
c) Learned Su Doku
d) Came to appreciate how lovely and amazing my car is and realised I do not use it nearly enough…

Coming back to Number 1… what are the advantages of a Parking Ticket? Hmmm…
a) Ooh - Maybe I am now more aware of disabled entry pavements and the needs of others
b) It has made me a stronger person and a better driver
c) And meant that I couldn’t buy a new skirt I wanted, so it has also made me less materialistic and vain…
d) And the money has gone to the council, so will of course be spent on improving roads, taking mattresses off the streets, and maybe collecting rubbish on time at least once.

Conclusion

It worked…I’m happy again. Therapy sessions by Blog…I should Trademark it.

Kim Hollamby, Head of IPC Media

2005-11-12T13:55:00.000Z

The head of IPC Media gave us a taste of his world.

Including, quite randomly, a long look at his little trip around the UK on a very nice boat (see above).

He then wrote about it - in his own words "torturing the readers for months on end" - with a series of features for a boating magazine in ‘editor-at- large’ style.

He did, however, have some interesting things to say about the future of websites and how they will interact with other forms of media.

A brief round-up of the lecture...

Kim offers these words of advice for aspiring journalists:

"Never upset the techies"

- you never know when you might need them

IPC Media
- A division of Time Warner (2% of company)
- 84 magazines with 64 corresponding websites
- 2,200 staff

- What’s on TV – biggest selling magazine; readership of 3,969,000
- Nme.com – biggest website; 3.8m visits per month

Therefore they are able to gauge the loyalty of users with the number of times they re-visit

Six Divisions of IPC
- Specialist Interest - hobbies
- Southbank – home/womens monthlies
- Connect – womens weeklies
- TX – TV publications
- Ignite! – music/mens lifestyle
- Wallpaper – wallpaper brand

Pitfalls of web writing
- White text on a dark background
- Text too blocky

Readers want to interact with more than one medium
- Voyeuristic content creates a fascinating dynamic
- Internet great for immediacy
- Web statistics – help to show writers feedback
- Not enough readers on email
- Forums/bulletins boards
- Few quantitifiable end benefits

Between 1999 and 2000, nearly every publication got a website
- Although not all worked; beme.com lost £25m and closed down

Aims of Websites in 2005

- Generating magazine subscription orders and newsagent sales
- Revenue
- Finding new readers (marketing)
- Nurturing reader loyalty
- Gathering data
- Offering a broader range of information

Staff are integrated between magazine and website:

"A cohesive cross-media content"

- Therefore they are separate entities with some cross-over

What Works…

Magazine Focus: Entertainment, guides, in-depth features, authoritative views, great pictures

Website Focus: Archive material for searches, news, lists and other searchable data, reader interaction, readers’ views

Both: Product reviews, classified adverts, recipes

Golden Rules of Website Content

1. Needs to be valuable (eg. it shouldn’t offer ‘soundbites’ of the current issue)
2. A ‘little and often’ is better than irregular major updates
3. ‘Poster’ sites offering little more than current issue information will never do well
4. Keyword-rich content such as news and product reviews usually generates high numbers of visits

Readers
- Want to engage as never before
- They have access to much of the information that was exclusive to magazines
- They want to be writers, editors and publishers

Online Forums

Advantages
- ‘Free’ content
- Greater thermometer and source of ideas
- Low overheads
- Used in many ways; including private subscription groups

Disadvantages
- Still have a legal responsibility
- Publisher

The Future...

- Websites are recognised as here to stay, with few exceptions
- Fully integrated cross-media will become the norm
- The role of new technologies will be significant; Eg. mobile phones
- Websites will influence magazine content and design

Richard Tait, Director, CJS

2005-11-11T13:08:00.000Z

Journalism and Regulation: The BBC Post-Hutton

Richard Tait, the Director of the Cardiff Journalism School, and a BBC Governor, gave us an insight into what the Hutton Report means for journalism and the BBC.

A Brief Outline

All journalism is subject to law
- Defamation, privacy, contract
- Print Journalism is largely self-regulated
- Broadcast journalism has always been regulated

Broadcast Regulation
- Spectrum of scarcity
- Fears of excessive influence
- BBC Charter
- Commercial TV licences
- Similar obligations

BBC Guidelines:
- Accurate
- Impartial
- Fair
- Harm and offence/taste and decency
- Policed by 2 regulatory bodies - OFCOM and BBC Governors

OfCom: What they regulate
- Fairness, Harm, Offence - BBC and Commercial TV and radio
- Accuracy, Impartiality - only commercial TV and radio

BBC Governors:
- A staff of experts, with a board of executives and non-execs
- They regulate Accuracy, Impartiality
- AlsoFairness, Harm, Offence

Role of Governors
- Protect BBC independence
- Maintain standards
- Protect interests of licence fee payers
- Supervise management
- Hire and fire Director-General

Broadcast news is trusted - figures show this

However...

Andrew Gilligan 2-way with John Humphreys on Today programme
The 45-minute claim findings:
- Not supported by reporters claim
- An inference, not a quote from Dr Kelly
- Intended to allege spin, not lies
- Not supported by other sources
- Not repeated and not true

*Richard Purvis wrote an article in The Guardian of all the different versions of the following stories in the media

Editorial Control
- Discussed with editor
- Reporter was at home
- Unlawyered
- Unscripted
- Unrehearsed

Checks on Story
- Gilligan says other sources confirmed general unhappiness
- Ministry of Defence and Downing St not asked for a response
- Live interview with Minister in programme and he was asked afterwards

Gilligans Reporting
- Brief headlines on personal organiser
- Fuller manuscript lost
- No tape
- No agreed quotes
- No affadavit

Confidentiality:
- No agreed description of the source
- BBC comments on source - jigsaw identification
- Gilligan sent email to select committee

Editorial Control
- Editorial management accepted reporters assurances
- Knew identity of source
- Did not initially look at original notes

BBC Governors
- Accepted the management's assurances
- Believed the BBC was being bullied
- No independent investigation of complaint
- Attacked for dual role - champion or regulator of the BBC?

Number 10 and the BBC
- Gilligan article in the Mail on Sunday
- Bad relations between Alistair Campbell and Today
- No formal complaint about the 6.07 broadcast
- "Scrambled our radar screens at the top of the BBC" - Gavyn Davies, BBC Chairman

Lord Hutton's report
- 6.07am allegation was untrue
- BBC Editorial system doesn't work
- New Chairman Michael Grade
- Director-General Mark Thompson
- Neil Report on BBC Journalism
- Reform of complaints procedure
- Reform of governance

The Future...

The Neil Report:
- Accuracy in note-taking
- Wherever practicable, on tape
- Do not rely on memory
- Check key points with the source

Allegations
- If made by the BBC, should have been thoroughly researched and checked
- If reported by the BBC, source should be tested robustly and strict adherence to approved scripts is essential

Fairness
- Allegations should be put to the party or parties concerned
- Potential contributors should be told the true and full purpose of the programme
- Give the audience as much information as possible

Two-Ways
- Should never be used to break a story containing serious allegations
- 2-ways require structure and production
- Briefing of presenters is essential

Reform of Complaints
- Strengthened Editorial Complaints Unit
- Reform of Governance Programme

Complaints Committee (GPCC)
- Independent advisors
- Final appeal to 5 governors

Reform of Governance
- New BBC Trust with greater separation from management
- Governance Unit
- Service licences
- Trust retains responsibility for accuracy and impartiality

"I'm a hack - not a geek"

2005-11-07T08:50:00.000Z

Richard Burton, Editor of Telegraph.co.uk

www.telegraph.co.uk

Richard's declaration was to assure us that he isn't one of 'those computer geek' people - he's a real journalist.

And a fairly tabloid one it seems.

Funny, though that he should be standing in front of one of 'those people', our Online lecturer Simon. I wonder if he was offended at the geek label...

Richard came from local weekly newspapers, where he got bored of the weekly deadlines and 'lack of excitement' as they could never beat other publications to get a story out.

He then was a Sub Editor for The Sunday Mirror and The Daily Telegraph.

He felt that in print journalism, "the creative process is very much the eye of the beholder".

He eventually 'fell' into online journalism because he was out of work, and has never looked back.

Telegraph.co.uk

Since 1996, the Telegraph has been online. It is an excellent site, very well put together, and has won several awards.

Telegraph.co.uk does not have the same resources as Guardian Unlimited, or the BBC Network, yet they manage to do a lot with it.

The web is an infinite space in which to put stories - unlike the more limited entities of print or broadcast.

Online journalism is still subject to libel laws and the staff continually modify the archived stories to make sure they are accurate.

Content

The staff like to think of themselves as librarians who help the user to navigate around their information space.

Telegraph.co.uk have a vast archive of news, features and photo galleries. You can download music and film clips.

- They even have an 'Encarta' style resource for help with school homework, with the chapters of information lined up ready to explore.

- You can also look pictures of every goal in the Premiership season.

Audience

There is a divergence between the paper and the site, although they do profess to follow the Telegraph 'brand'.

- The site aims to know the audience and also embrace a wider spectrum of people.

- Currently, they are aiming for a younger, female audience.

"If people are talking about it, its news"

Telegraph .co.uk has a continual 'ticker' across the top left of the screen lets us know the latest breaking news.

In the lecture the ticker read, rather amusingly:

'Sun editor Rebekah Wade arrested for assaulting Ross Kemp'

...Which ends up as the biggest tabloid story all year (probably).

And hidden below the politics and sport is the headline:

'Runaway panda found up tree in Birmingham'

...Fantastic. This must have drawn thousands of hits for pure absurdity and intrigue.

The Blackberries service is very popular, as Richard demonstrated with his continuously buzzing mobile phone. For 25p a time, the 'news junkies' are kept clued up with the latest news headlines.

But apparently, this is really about "impressing people at dinner parties".

If you ever get invited to one, that is.

Live coverage of events means they can continually update stories as they occur.

At a speech by Blair, they got out the story within 56 seconds (as the geeks informed him) which made Richard feel very proud.

He said that although this doesn't really matter, and no-one really cares, he still "went home and told the kids that night".

It seems that Richard has finally found the excitement he once craved when working on local papers...

Integrity V Money

Which is the most important?

"Speed does sometimes take precedence over accuracy"

- Richard admitted.

...But they do have the luxury of being able to go back to the stories and correct them, which fellow print and broadcast journalists wouldn't be able to do.

Integrity Vs Money

Richard seemed to talk more of advertising than of journalism.

The online market is very much about strategy, marketing and keeping ahead, even more so than the newspaper market.

They are 'commercially driven by page impressions' from the UK market and the more hits they get, the more the advertisers 'throw money at them'.

The Telegraph site, as a trusted brand, makes money through partnerships with commercial companies that they promote on the site.

I think this a shock to me as I thought that the journalistic integrity of the leading broadsheet would want the same ethos in their corresponding website.

However it seems that the money that constant adverts, pop-ups and even advertising editorial bring in is needed to stay ahead of the game.

Catch-22

Richard discussed the ongoing battle between the advertising department and editorial, with the advertising people wanting more advert space and editorial staff wanting to 'uphold their journalistic integrity'.

However this is always the case with a commercial output. Newspaper offices are renowned for the animosity between advertising and editorial.

It's a catch 22 situation, as the advertising departments think that as they bring in the most money, they should have greater control.

...However the editorial department feel sold out by the fact that they are usually better educated or trained, more talented and have greater integrity yet are paid less than the ad reps on the floor below.

Newsrooms I have worked in usually had a cold reception towards 'those downstairs' in advertising.

Perhaps it is only with the BBC are you able to be relatively free from any commercial incentive and can simply focus on producing good quality journalism...

Online journalism: the future?

Richard said that he used to be mocked by his colleagues in the print world for 'playing around with toys' in online journalism.

However it appears that now journalists are taking online journalism much more seriously and many are crossing over to online.

However the downside is that there is no investigative journalism and no chance of sending reporters out to different countries to report.

Amanda Powell: Editor of BBC Wales Online

2005-10-23T18:32:00.000+01:00

www.bbc.co.uk/walesnews

Online Journalism:
"A broadcast environment with many similarities to print journalism."

Audience
- Mainly, users log on between 11am and 2pm
- And for between 30 seconds and 1 hour
- Therefore the content has to be attractive and compelling
- People read 2/3rds less on screen than they do in print
- They'll go somewhere else if its slow to download

Headline is vital
- No more than 6 words
- Short summary which tells story - or 'promo box'
- Pictures are important: small but impactful; close-up, tight pics
- Balance hard news and features

'Clickable' links...
- Have a 'human element'
- Accessible
- Simple language; but don't dumb down
- Original
- Good intro
- Attractive images
- Broad appeal

Accuracy
- They aim to stamp out Americanisms
- Neil Report: showed aims for BBC journalists
- Archive facility online
- 23-25 million people a day visit the BBC website
- Accuracy is vital: contempt of court, copyright, libel therefore note-taking, legal knowledge and a questioning mind

Skills they look for in an employee
- Good grammar and clear writing
- Good sense of news priorities
- Able to work calmly under pressure
- Sound legal knowledge and accuracy
- Print experience an advantage

No-one forgets the first time

2005-10-15T19:31:00.000+01:00

No one forgets their first...blog.

Apparently.

Lately I have been feeling left behind and thinking it was time to finally take that important first step. So here I go...

I'm here at Cardiff University a month into the PGDip Broadcast Journalism. I'm learning a lot, I think.

Now I am attempting to catapult myself into the world of cyberspace with my very own Blog. Exciting stuff...

More updates will follow on our weekly Online Journalism lectures and other interesting little stories.

Bye for now...xx