BBC progamme enlists bloggers for election coverage

Posted by Martin Stabe on 25 October 2006 at 13:52
Tags: BBC, Blogs, Journalism, Podcasting, Radio, Vodcasting

BBC Five Live’s programme Up All Night is hoping enlist citizen journalists’ help to cover the US election.

The programme is looking for bloggers, podcasters and vloggers who are covering their local races, along with “people with an interesting perspective” willing to offer personal views.

On the progamme’s blog, Chris Vallance wrote: “Our hope is that by enlisting your help we’ll have coverage that isn’t just about pundits and experts but gives us a real flavour of what the race is like for ordinary Americans that cuts through some of the stereotypes about politics in the US.”
The plan has gained the attention of Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, and the Sunlight Foundation — one of the groups behind an earlier successful networked journalism effort. That should bring it to wider attention among American bloggers.

Stories increasingly breaking online

Posted by Jeffrey Blyth on 21 March 2006 at 12:40
Tags: Journalism, Mobile Phones, Newspapers, Online, Radio, Television, United States

Where are the big scoops first seen these days? According to USA Today media columnist Peter Johnson, it’s the Internet. As the new technology allows news-buffs to get the latest news on their home or office computersor cell phones, news organizations no longer want to hold their big stories for the next morning’s paper or even the evening television news program.

Charlotte Evans, editor of the Rome News-Tribune in Georgia, speaking for lots of other editors these days when she told Johnson: “When we have breaking news we break it online. We save the pictures and in-depth material for the paper itself.�

Papers that wait 24 hours to tell their readers what’s happening are doing a disservice, Evans says.

These days even TV and radio executives have to grapple with the problem of whether to hold a story for their evening programs or to put it out on the web immediately – in the hope that it will ultimately attract viewers or listeners.

The only people not too happy about the trend are old-time newsmen who still prefer to see their stories in print. “Not all reporters find that breaking news on the website gives them the same satisfaction as breaking it on the front page� says Bill Keller, editor of the New York Times.

BBC radio websites gain record figures

Posted by Caitlin Pike on 23 February 2006 at 17:24
Tags: BBC, Journalism, New Media, Online, Radio

The BBC’s radio websites were visited by a record 8.2 million unique users in January, who consumed 17 million hours of live and on demand radio. 

The month beat the previous record of 8.1 million users, set in November 2005, as BBC Radio 1 pulled in more than three million users and Radio 4 contributed 1.5 million. 

But it was BBC Radio Five Live which showed the biggest increases, with the main site tipping the million mark, whilst offshoot sites 606 and Sportdaq showed huge growth. 

In the last full month, with 20 programmes, the download and podcast trial generated a record 1.9 million MP3 downloads. 

Radio 4’s In Our Time saw the biggest rise in demand - up 38,000 downloads on December - while the Today 8.10am interview took the top spot with more than 400,000 downloads.

VOA cuts back foreign-language broadcasts

Posted by Jeffrey Blyth on 21 February 2006 at 12:04
Tags: Al Jazeera, BBC, Radio, United States

The Voice of America, which next to the BBC is probably the most prolific of English-language radio news services, is cutting back.

It plans to drop many of its English-language broadcasts. Also its news broadcasts in Croatian, Turkish, Thai, Greek and Georgian. Broadcasts in Albanian, Bosnian, Serbian, Russia and Hindi may also be cut back. In their place VOA will concentrate its efforts – and money – on broadcasts to the Middle East, especially to countries where the US is spending the most effort on combating terrorism.

Also scheduled to go is “News Now,�? the VOA’s flagship English-language programme, which broadcasts world-wide 14 hours a day and includes hourly news updates. The move has angered many journalists here, who say that the move will virtually eliminate English-language radio broadcasts to almost everywhere but Africa and potentially put many journalists out of work.

They also note the change comes at a time when Russia, China and the Qatar-based al-Jazeera network are all adding television or internet programming in English.

“It’s painful but necessary” claimed Kenneth Tomlinson, chairman of the VOA board of governors.