Newspaper bosses blast BBC over local websites - Times Online October 17, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentMore on this continuing turf war, which touches on competition, private vs public, newspapers vs broadcaster(s) — not to mention who's got the money (and will?) for such investment. NB The BBC Trust has yet to formally approve the plans. More arguments to follow, no doubt.
"Two of Britain's newspaper bosses lined up to attack Sir Michael Lyons, the chairman of the BBC Trust, for saying that "nobody can be satisfied" with the quality of the country's local and regional press.
Sly Bailey, the chief executive of Trinity Mirror, owner of the Liverpool Echo, and Tim Bowdler, the chief executive of Johnston Press, owner of the Yorkshire Post, said that his remarks implied that he had prejudged a review of BBC plans to expand its local websites."
The Twitter-isation of the news — andrewlewin: let me think about that October 12, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentTwitter comes of age?
“Ironically then, it seems that microblogging is a return to actual reporting of fast moving events, while the other pieces are analysis or comment that have become confused/synonymous with journalism only in the last couple of decades. Journalism has come home to the future, and it matches perfectly the emerging online set-up: live text is to Twitter as analysis/comment is to blogs.”
BBC extends UGC efforts with dedicated reporter — BBC NEWS | The Editors October 11, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentA more proactive approach to developing stories based on user-generated content, it seems:
"[W]e've started a pilot to report more of the stories you're sending us while at the same time making a bigger effort to reach out and join in conversations on the web […]
…we've decided to try out a reporter whose beat is simply all the content you've been sending in to us - our first Interactive Reporter.
Siobhan Courtney has been with us for a fortnight now and has already scored two major successes […]
…on Tuesday night we experimented by opening up channels on video chatrooms Qik, 12Seconds and Phreadz to join in conversations wherever they were happening rather than expect people to come to us and host them on the BBC's platforms."
Nick Robinson: ‘I got too close to government in reporting Iraq’ October 9, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : Journalism, News, blogging, journalism education, reporting , 1 comment so farThe BBC’s political editor regrets:
The biggest self-criticism I have was [that] I got too close to government in the reporting of the Iraq war. I didn’t do enough to go away and say ‘well hold on, what about the other side?’ It is the one moment in my recent career where I have thought I didn’t push hard enough, I didn’t question enough and I should have been more careful.
Robinson offered this candid self-assessment in a debate on political campaigners and reporters at City University last night — as reported by one of my journalism students, Michael Haddon, for journalism.co.uk, and on his own blog. Michael also wrote about Iain Dale’s comments on political reporting (and on his blog).
As for the government line on weapons of mass destruction, Robinson said:
I don’t think the government did set out to lie about weapons of mass destruction. I do think they systematically and cumulatively misled people.
What’s the distinction? It was clear to me that Alastair Campbell knew how what he was saying was being reported, knew that that was a long way from the truth, and was content for it so to be. They knew it was wrong, they wanted it to be wrong - they haven’t actually lied.
Footnote to Michael and someone at Journalism.co.uk: check spelling — it’s Alastair not Alistair (corrected in quote above). Bring back the subs!
The news about Robert Peston: meta-reporting? October 9, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : Journalism, News, blogging, reporting , add a commentUpdate: Michael Howard has asked the FSA to investigate the alleged leaking to Peston/the BBC of sensitive information about the bank rescue package, reports Guido Fawkes.
—–
The BBC’s business editor is becoming the news, and not just as in the spoof article I bookmarked previously.
The House of Lords communications committee asks whether he’s setting the agenda:
“Well, I think there is an argument for that. One can’t deny that Robert Peston has been playing an instrumental role in the story and anyone in the news business has to pay close attention to what Robert Peston reports,” the Daily Mail political editor, Ben Brogan, told the committee.
“He is well informed, well connected and he has on a number of occasions broken the news it would be foolish in the extreme to ignore him. That, in some ways, gives him an enormous degree of power. But more power to his elbow, if he’s the journalist that is leading the charge on this, then good for him.”
More people want to find him online, says Robin Goad of Hitwise…
while he reports on falling markets, his own stock is looking like a good bet. As the chart below illustrates, UK Internet searches for ‘robert peston’ have shot up over the last month.
…which prompts a Media Guardian article on a similar theme, followed by a light piece about Peston’s potential rivals.
Journalists and media-watchers have also had the chance to read interview profiles of Peston in The Independent and The Guardian. Both allude to his contacts and brilliant scoops, of course — but don’t address directly how far he’s managing to steer the narrow course between reporter of scoops and cypher.
Footnote: Yesterday I read Peston’s blog post and not much later listened to his analysis piece on the 6pm Radio 4 news, and realised they were the same thing. So posting scripts is one way to do it, to answer Robin Goad’s query of how Peston was broadcasting frequently and
somehow also finding time update his blog daily with analysis of the latest episode in the ongoing saga of the financial crisis
I doubt I’m the first to realise this.
John Naughton: Slavish reporters join Microsoft in cloud cuckoo land | Media | The Observer October 5, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentJohn Naughton on the lack of questioning claims made by big, powerful companies/individuals — here, Microsoft and the easy ride given to its boss, Steve Ballmer. With special reference to BBC tech correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones:
"our tendency to lose all capacity for critical thought when confronted by great wealth or power […] we see it in the way even hardened hacks go weak when offered an audience with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or even, God help us, Steve Ballmer, chief of Microsoft.
[…] he went on to say that Windows Vista had been 'the most popular operating system that Microsoft had ever introduced'.
This hooey was conscientiously relayed by Cellan-Jones, who was too polite to ask why, if Vista is such a success, Ballmer is to unveil its successor, Windows 7, to the Microsoft developers' conference at the end of this month. Microsoft is such a powerful company that it never seems to occur to reporters that its leaders might be fantasising. It's the aphrodisiac effect again."