BBC DG Mark Thompson

Convergence.  This was one of the keywords that came of out of this year’s 2011 Financial Times Digital Media & Broadcast Conference.  It’s taking me some time to pen this, but I wanted to share some of the key points that were discussed.

Last year the conference coincided with the BBC unveiling the results of it’s Strategy Review.  This year gathering started on the same time as Apple unveiled its much-anticipated iPad 2, Facebook announced the rollout of its Comments plug-in and the all-important decision from the Department for Culture Media and Sport Minister Jeremy Hunt MP to allow News International’s full take-over of BSkyB.

Chief executives and senior board members gathered in London to outline their thoughts on an industry that is changing at breakneck speed.  It’s an industry that is no longer operating by itself, but a sector that is being driven by the technology that their own consumers are engaging with.  And the speed of adoption is forcing many boards to re-evaluate how they engage with their audiences.

Mobile and social networking are the two platforms, the two elephants in the room, that media and broadcast organisations are still struggling to grapple with.  They are also the platforms that public relations professionals must fully grasp for themselves and their clients.

BBC Director General Mark Thompson highlighted this year how ‘new media’ and the consumer have shaped how it offers content.  The corporation accepted that consumers want the BBC’s content on every platform.  Its iPlayer is today available on the iPhone and iPad, with Thompson confirming that people even watch BBC content on their mobiles in bed.

Thompson understands simplicity and highlighted that the iPlayer works because it is straightforward.  In January of this year 162 million downloads were made through the iPlayer, this in a country of 25 million households.

Thompson confirmed that 2011 is the year of convergence, stating that strength is with those that have a strong presence online and understand the value of simplicity.

One of the areas that the BBC Director General is looking at is the power and influence of social recommendations and how this will shape how we all watch television.  Indeed Thompson confirmed that the BBC and Facebook are having conversations.

Speaking at the conference Facebook’s EMEA Managing Director Joanna Shield confirmed that the company now has 30 million active users in the UK, accounting for 1 in 2 of the population.  Talking about how it ‘supports‘ UK media Shields highlighted that 10% of the Daily Mail’s web traffic now comes from Facebook and that the sites plugins have helped The Independent gain up to a 700% increase in traffic.

Talking of Facebook, Sales and Marketing Director for mobile provider 3 Marc Allera in a separate session said that a staggering 75% of their data traffic is directed to Facebook – an incredible statistic.  Allera also said that 90% of 3’s sales are Smartphone’s.

Facebook is the platform of choice for the consumer.  For business it is the ‘frenemy’, a business that delivers eyeballs to those with an online presence, but a business that can quickly cannibalise those that work with it.  Take Groupon and Livingsocial for example.  Both living in the hype, but both under the knife of Facebook, who a few days ago announced ‘a new service that will sell discounts deals to consumers.’ Sound familiar?

So, Facebook is becoming an entity in itself.  The stats show it, but for the time being, it is a fact that business needs to learn to live with it.  Equally, it needs to retain control of the data that makes it’s business a business.

I was going to ask, remember when clients used to ask about needing a Facebook Strategy?  Something that made PRs and Strategists cringe?  Well, there is a need to have a Facebook Strategy, but a strategy to manage them and avoid each business being cannibalised by this growing entity.  The data that companies share with the social giant make the same businesses vulnerable.

Convergence and Facebook, and of course all the other offerings.  The tables have turned and consumers are showing businesses how and where they want their content.

Fifa vice-president Jack Warner branded the BBC “unpatriotic” for deciding to screen an investigation into the football governing body so close to the vote on 3 December which would decide the host of the 2018 World Cup.

Regardless of what the sports and football world might think of Mr Warner, we have to question the thinking and rational for not just the BBC’s Panorama programme, which was screened last night, but the Sunday Times expose a few weeks back.  These two media outlets claimed that their investigations were in the ‘public interest’, but the timing of their broadcast couldn’t have been anything other than fatal.  Unpatriotic, as Mr Warner said might not be that wide of the mark.

Since news broke of what these two outlets were doing the Football Association has been scrambling to still be in with a chance to host the 2018 World Cup.  It’s pushed forward its power players to rally the nation into showing strength in unity.  England’s World Cup 2018 bid international president David Dein called for the nation and by default the media, to get behind the bid.  Prime Minister David Cameron and Prince William will both be in Zurich on Thursday supporting the bid.  But this might just be the public face for a bid that is actually intended to change Fifa rather than secure the World Cup.

I am not for one minute arguing for investigative journalism to be gagged.  Nor am I condoning the culture of favour that exists within Fifa, an organisation that promotes Fair Play on the pitch, but ignores it in the boardroom.  Let’s be honest, are these investigations really in the public interest, this being common well-being?  Such a claim is more of a catch-all.

There are three sides to every story – two sides and the truth.

The big question is about the communications expertise that exists within England’s bid.  Did England’s bid team have the necessary power to work with the media?  Was it able to influence the timing of such and much needed investigation?  Could the media’s work help in England’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup?  Or did England just know that it didn’t stand a chance, which is why it embarked on a campaign to reform Fifa.

We will be anticipating with anguish the results of Fifa’s Executive Committee’s vote on Thursday.  The bid’s Facebook page has support from people from over 170 countries!

We all know how the downturn in advertising spend has affected the press and publishing industries.  Newsrooms appear to have been decimated as publishers across all sectors laid journalists out to pasture.  In far too much haste commentators wasted no time in penning the obligatory obituary for their own industry.  But how wrong they appeared to have been.

If there was one thing that came from last week’s news:rewired conference at London’s City University it was that journalism is rediscovering itself and using technology and it’s audience to do an even better job.  The fact is that while the decline in advertising has decimated newspapers and magazine, publishers have been fighting back, restructuring and getting their journalists to use social media and networking platforms not just for promoting content but for reaching out, developing contacts and finding great stories.

Professor George Brock opened the day with a series of seminal questions, is there such a thing as news, is authority in the crowd or the expert, does news stay in bundles and how do we [journalists] tell what is true?

Brock challenged the news model and gave examples of how outlets in the US are re-establishing themselves.  In his keynote speech he encouraged those present to not look at technology as the saviour of journalism, but to look backward and remember traditional journalism.

Using the 2009 Iranian election protests as an example Brock cited that while Twitter and video were important during the uprising, “it’s a less well known that one of the most effective ways of opposition ideas was slogans stamped on banknotes.”  He added that opposition messages were, “now stamped on so many banknotes that the governor or the Iranian Central Bank – not very sympathetic to the authorities – is in an argument with the authorities who want them removed from circulation.  Of course, in an economy you can’t just withdraw large numbers of banknotes [as] you will trigger an economic crisis.  So the message remains in circulation!”

Technology and social media platforms are tools that support communications.  They support journalism and public relations. BBC College of Journalism Editor Kevin Marsh highlighted how the BBC Newsroom had adopted web-centric journalism skills that allow engagement with its audience.  Something that I’ve written about before.

Kevin Marsh at news:rewired 2010 from BBC College of Journalism on Vimeo.

Marsh confirmed that new skills and platforms are just that, new.  They are there to back up traditional newsgathering skills such as organising an outside broadcast, gathering information from a court case or persuading people to talk and go on the record.

Seminars that took place confirmed that journalists have to learn and adapt to how people are moving online.  Journalists needed to pick up new skills on how multimedia newsrooms work, the power of social media for journalists, crowd-sourcing and data-mashing.

Content and stories are online and it’s a journalist’s job is to find and report them depending on their beat.  To use content to back up what contacts can provide.

But why is this so important to public relations professionals?  Why should this shift matter to those who build and shape brands and reputations?

In my opinion it matters a lot.  It matters because journalists are using citizens as an extension of their profession.  And citizens that are happy to contribute.  They are happy to be the eyes and ears on the ground.

During the crowd sourcing session tempers nearly got the better of some who objected to the term ‘citizen-journalists.’  Some attendees coined the term ‘eye-witness-journalists’ as professionals found it objectionable that people with no training described themselves as ‘journalists’.  While it was a very well argued point, the fact is that while many people can contribute to a story it is a trained journalist that can filter out the coal from the diamonds.

All this matters to PRs because people that unhappy customers can be found very easily.  Technology has herded people into online pens and it is the job of a good journalist to find them and work them into a story.

The same people want to receive their content through their social media platforms, online and on their mobiles.  The same devices that can now capture any bit of breaking news.

Of course journalists are learning on the go as the news and publishing industry moved online.  A channel where readers and viewers are less faithful.  Loyalty will depend on the speed at which content is updated.

Award-winning videojournalist and Southbank artist-in-residence David Dunkley Gyimah shows us what can be done and possibly what journalists should be.  Watching David confirmed that journalists might have to be multi-disciplined.

A brief visual history of videojournalism from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Journalism is evolving and the new technology that for so long had been blamed for its potential demise might in fact be its saviour.  And that is important for everybody, not just journalists, and not just PRs.

BBC Television Centre Newsroom

The BBC’s User-Generated-Content (UGC) unit will be celebrating its fifth birthday this summer.  Since it was set up in 2005, the unit has quietly been transforming how the BBC gathers and reports news.  The unit is now a hub of 23 journalists that sift through stories, pictures and videos sent in by people who either have a story to tell or find themselves at the centre of a newsworthy event.

Today the hub supports the corporation’s newsgathering process.  It links BBC News with its audience or rather the audience with the newsroom through the corporations own website, as well as through email, text and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.  On an average week the hub processes 50,000 email comments and contributions, 1,000 images and 100 video clips.

It works because people make it work and the BBC and its senior management understand the concept of citizen journalism.  They see their audience as an asset that can add value to the corporations newsgathering.  For the BBC journalism is now a two-way relationship where they engage with their audience and listen to what they are interested in.  The BBC brings them into the editorial process, allowing them to have a conversation of equals.  This allows ordinary citizens to drive content to experienced and trained journalists who cannot access countries and restricted stories, but can piece together information driven to them by people on the ground.

But how does the UGC hub work, what does it do and how does it corroborate fact from fiction from its contributors?

Thanks to the hub’s editor Matthew Eltringham I spent a day at the BBC in December learning how they work and support the corporation’s news outlets, leading them to win the ‘2009 News Award For Outstanding Contribution To BBC News.’

Located at the heart of the BBC Newsroom, the hub is like any other section, with desks, phones, Dell computers and monitors.  What makes the hub unique is that they are the first contact point for contributors and citizen journalists from around the world.  They allow people to engage and support the newsgathering process.  Once material is verified they’ll make it available internally to television and radio news programmes.

Each news outlet will have their presence online through either a page or blog on the BBC News site.  Some may also have a Twitter feed that they’ll use to reach out to their individual audience through which they can promote their work and content.  Individual journalists might also use and promote their work through their own Twitter feed.

But it was never as easy as it is today.  A number of years back I was told by a now senior BBC News executive of how respected television news personalities were opposed to writing a blog on the BBC’s own website that added insight and detail to 1 minute 30-second TV packages they put together.  They “felt that it devalued their experience and knowledge” and that if it wasn’t in their package it wasn’t important.  It is all very different today with Robert Peston and Nick Robinson amongst others viewing their blogs as central to their work.  In fact they see the blogs as another channel through which they promote their stories and a way of engaging with their respective audiences.

Today the hub works in three ways – it listens to chatter and gauges public reaction on the BBC’s own forums as well as social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, it sends out requests for content (pictures, video and personal reaction) on breaking news stories through the BBC News website and its dedicated Twitter feeds and it filters and verifies content sent in by people.

Engaging with its audience

The BBC’s ‘Have Your Say’ section on the news site is a platform through which readers and viewers can share their thoughts on relevant newsworthy events.  There are around 345,000 registered users and contributors, but only a small number of these contribute on a regular basis.

With so many online registration systems in use the BBC is currently working on unifying these so that visitors to any BBC site – News, iPlayer, etc – need only one registration.  The intention is that by March 2010, BBC iD will be the single sign in for all BBC Online services.  I understand that the aim is for BBC iD to have a social media feel to it, so that users can list amongst other things their likes, comments and contributions – let it be views of programmes on iPlayer or comments or contributions they’ve made to BBC News stories.

The hub also monitors comments on its ‘Have Your Say’ forum and searches for reaction on networking sites such as Facebook.  An example of this was the coverage the BBC gave to how over 20,000 people joined a group on Facebook in support of Massimo Tartaglia, the individual who bloodied Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi after a rally in Milan.

Requesting and searching for collateral

BBC One Ten O'Clock News

At a recent Chartered Institute of Public Relations Greater London Group event Nic Newman, the BBC’s Future Media and Technology Controller for Journalism and Digital Distribution, said that such has been the impact of social media that news outlets have reacted by abandoning attempts ‘to be first for breaking news, focusing instead on being the best at verifying and curating’ stories.

Depending on the newsworthiness of an event, the UGC hub will access a story on the BBC News website and add a form asking for pictures, video and comment from people caught up or affected by an event.  Staff on the hub will also put out requests through their central BBC newsgathering Twitter feeds.

For diarised stories such as conferences, the hub will set up a Twitter feed dedicated to that event.  For example, for the recent summit in Copenhagen Climate Change Conference they set up: twitter.com/BBC_cop15.  Requests for material and stories on breaking news stories will be pushed out through their twitter.com/BBC_HaveYourSay Twitter feed.

The level of response varies from story to story with people sending in comment, pictures and video through the BBC’s own website as well as email and sms/mms.

The BBC UGC hub is only responsible for the central newsgathering Twitter feeds.  It doesn’t manage the feeds of specific BBC News programmes, such as those for The Today Programme, Newsnight or BBC Radio 5 Live’s Drive.  Each of these outlets is responsible for managing and communicating with their audience.  The BBC News Sports team manage their own social media channels, tools and communications.

Verifying content

BBC News - Get In Touch

Reporting accurate information is at the heart of every news organisation.  But as a public broadcaster the BBC is more accountable than other news outlets.  This is why it is the hub’s policy to verify all user-generated-content that they want to use and forward to other BBC news programmes.

Where appropriate staff on the hub will verify stories and images by speaking with the contributor by phone.  They will also check EXIF details of images that they want to use.

It is the policy of the hub to not pay for any image, exclusive or otherwise that is sent in or offered.  They would rather an independent agency buy the exclusivity and pay them usage rights.

Pictures used are credited to each contributor and meta-tags are added to images used online to support the BBC’s SEO.

The BBC has been setting the standards in newsgathering for many years.  It was one of the first news outlets to set up a website and was one of the first to recognise citizen journalism and use user-generated-content in its newsgathering. More recently they were the first mainstream media organisations to set up a dedicated team to manage user-generated-content.

In the next number of months the corporation will release it’s much anticipated iPhone app, which has been held up by legal wrangles with Apple.  The app though could well prove to be another tool in the corporation’s newsgathering armoury.

For far too long people have criticised the BBC for being too big and not delivering content.  Yet they are the first to reach out, engage with them and listen and use content they supply.

It is going to be an interesting year for media and news organisations and you can be sure that what the BBC have been pioneering will be replicated in other newsrooms around the world.

Laura Oliver, Nic Newman and Julio Romo

Nic Newman summed up the impact that social media is having on journalism when he said that based on volume and time spent on site, “Facebook was six times bigger than CNN.”  People today spend more time on social networking sites than on news sites, with industry commentators citing this to highlight the reason for the supposed death of news and quality journalism.  For others though social media represents an opportunity – a resource that adds value to journalism, which is why the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Greater London Group (CIPR GLG) wanted to host an event to discuss how social media is re-shaping journalism and the news industry.

For this debate we were delighted to welcome Nic Newman, the BBC’s Future Media and Technology Controller for Journalism and Digital Distribution and Laura Oliver, Editor for Journalism.co.uk.

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Nic had just returned to the BBC after three months at the Reuters Institute for The Study of Journalism at Oxford University where he wrote a paper on ‘The rise of social media and its impact on mainstream journalism.’ A document that gave insight into how social media was being adopted and used within the BBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.

As has been well publicised, the reach of news organisations has been in decline for many years, ever since publishers implemented a business model that gave away its content for free online so that they could get a slice of the at the time new revenue from online advertising.  Of course as we now know this strategy ended up ‘cannibalising’ revenues from print, broadcast and other news focused incomes as consumers stopped buying newspapers and magazines and moved online where news is free.

The double-whammy came with the rise of social media, as people moved to Facebook, Twitter and the like and stopped visiting news websites.  And it was through these ‘herds’ – their friends and followers – that people started to get the breaking news stories that for so long had been the preserve of news outlets.

While some industry commentators saw social media as the final nail in the coffin for quality journalism and the news industry, others viewed it as an opportunity, as it confirmed the belief that through social media journalists could ‘better reach out to people who know more about a given subject.’

Newman stated that what we are currently seeing in journalism is a, “quiet revolution.”  Between 2007-2009 there’s been an explosion in participation, ‘driven by user-friendly internet tools, better connectivity and new mobile devices.  Social Networking and UGC have become mainstream activities, accounting for almost 20 per cent of internet time in the UK and involving half of all internet users.  This dramatic change has forced traditional news organisations to take note.’  And news outlets have reacted by abandoning attempts ‘to be first for breaking news, focusing instead on being the best at verifying and curating it.’

Social media expert Clay Shirky says in Newman’s report that ‘you trade speed for accuracy’ by getting updates from Twitter.  And this is what the news industry is now focusing on, accurate and in-depth reporting.

The BBC’s user generated content (UGC) hub on an average week processes over 10,000 email comments, 1,000 still images and 100 video clips.  Staffed by 23 people the hub can access breaking news images and stories, supporting news producers for programmes such as the BBC’s Ten O’Clock News.  They also act as a contact point for people with stories to tell – a case of this was when it was contacted in February 2009 by an HBOS whistleblower.  Social media is a platform that links people with quality news.

We were told by Newman and Oliver that social networks allows journalists to find and tell better stories and engage with new audiences.  I asked if this meant a reduced role for PRs as journalists could go ‘straight to source’ through social networking channels.  “No,” we were told.  Just as journalists could use social networks to gain facts, insight and case studies, PRs could and were bypassing the media and taking their messages direct to their audiences.  Oliver added that, “PRs would always be involved in the conversation.”  The right to reply we should remember is to a certain extent enshrined in journalism and the editorial guidelines of many news outlets.

Newman pointed out that “as if to add insult to injury, these new networks and individuals are also acting as a check on traditional media, questioning our accuracy and standards, and forcing transparency.”

Oliver confirmed that outlets are having to be more transparent.  I asked if social media is opening journalists’ notebooks.  “Yes,” was her answer.  In Oliver’s case, and from what she knows from journalists in nationals and business-to-business titles, there is a lot of sharing of links through social bookmarking sites and the like.  Links that allow people to build a better picture of a journalist and their ‘beat.’  It also allows readers and PRs to build better relationships with them, which can only be a good thing.

But how is social media being used in journalism?  Laura Oliver confirmed that journalists now use sites to gain opinion and case studies on stories that they might be working on.  People can be found on networking sites discussing most subjects and this is invaluable to journalists.  These people are consumers, potential customers and stakeholders.  They share thoughts and knowledge with other people.  If they complain about a bad experience with a brand, they’ll share it, and journalists will hear it and if it’s newsworthy enough report it

Journalists and media outlets know that people carry mobile devices with which they can stay in contact with their networks.  They know that people can now compliment a story that they are working on as these devices can capture images and audio.

The new tools of the trade for journalists include Tweetdeck, Facebook, Audioboo – an application that allows users to post and share audio files.  Newsrooms I am sure also have the ability to monitor conversations through Viralheat, a social measurement platform that covers hundreds of viral video destination sites, Twitter, and millions blogs & websites.

News outlets like the BBC for example use Twitter to get case studies for news packages about any story.  Newman gave the example of how the BBC Ten O’Clock News wanted case study that related to an engineering story that they were putting together.  News producers asked Technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones if he could help.  Rory obliged by putting a call for help on his Twitter feed.  Within minutes his request was met by numerous offers of help, one that was local to London was used.  It was that easy and by the look of it not a PR in sight!

As PRs we have to remember that thanks to social media journalists have better access to the opinions and comments from consumers and stakeholders.  Social media is not just a platform for technology story, but a platform through which people can have conversations about any given subject.

The one thing that is certain is that social media is here to stay. It is even influencing journalism training and editorial control as the industry evaluates how to meet the changing dynamics of how and from where people get their news.  Griffith University in Australia has even made Twitter part of the mandatory course load for journalism students.

And it is affecting how we PRs do our job.  It isn’t just an add-on for monologue campaigns that we have been so used to developing.  It is a platform through which our clients can better engage with current and potential consumers.

Social media is open, it is transparent.  The conversations that our customers have can be seen not just by us, but by journalists that judge and hold us to account, and that does not have to be an issue.

The BBC launched its much-anticipated ‘Democracy Live’ online service on Friday. Offering ‘live and video on demand video coverage of the UK’s national political institutions and the European Parliament’, the site brings politics to the public. Giving people insight into government and how our elected representatives and institutions work.

It was two years ago when the corporation’s Director General Mark Thompson gave a speech at Westminster on trust, politics and broadcasting where he outlined his view on how the BBC could help make politics more relevant to every citizen in this country.

At the time Thomson said, “We want to take our coverage of Westminster, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the European Parliament, as well as local councils up and down the land and turn them into the most engaging, the most creative multimedia portal for democracy in the world, using BBC Parliament and our other television, networks, radio, the web and mobile.” Since then MPs and news outlets have come under more scrutiny than ever before.

In his speech Thompson added, “Direct access to information about your MP or representative: how they vote, what they stand for, how you can contact them. Survival guides and in-depth analysis of current debates and current legislation. Easy ways, for anyone who wants to, to plug into and take part in the debate. And all of it available to every secondary school in the UK as part of a strengthened commitment by BBC Learning to supporting citizenship and modern media literacy.”

I understand that the BBC has invested between £1-£1.5 million on Democracy Live, with the most significant cost being the 11 members of staff focused on the site.

Up and until the launch accessing such information and real-time feeds were available through either the Parliament site or through paid-for services such as those offered by companies such as DeHavilland.

What will make Democracy Live work is the use of speech-to-text recognition software offered by Blinkx. It is understood that Blinkx will the use both the phonetic and text transcripts to create transcripts and meta-tags that can be added to each video.  Blinkx also has a speech to text success rate of over 80 per cent, which is expected to increase as the site and video services beds in.

I also gather that the beta’s of the site that were presented to politicians during conference season were well received.

So, politics through the BBC, scrutiny of politicians and their decision-making though the BBC.

Ho, ho and ho again.  Chris Martin and the rest of the Coldplay gang were joined at The O2 on Tuesday by Simon Pegg for a Christmas sing-a-long.  The band were in a cheeky and festive mood, with plenty of comment from Chris on the X-Factor and the ‘Strictly Come Voting’ fiasco

Anyhow, Chris [Martin] appeared this morning on Moyle’s BBC Radio 1 show where he played some Christmas piano jingles.  Remains me of the days when there was such a thing as ‘Piano House’.  Urgh.  Right, less of me.  I am sure that you want to see the lads with their antlers and Christmas hats.

Rossing around

It looks like Georgina Baillie will be laughing all the way to the bank after an exclusive interview with her appeared on The Sun’s website.  And you know what that means, that cash must have changed hands.

Sure, Russ and Ross might have overstepped the mark by sharing with the whole-wide world Brand’s times with Georgina.  But the story has really been blown-out out of all proportion.  I mean, to have a debate in the House of Commons, have the Prime Minster share his thoughts on the joke and for people and journalists to call for heads to roll at the BBC?  This is just crazy.  Well, it isn’t that crazy given that a lot of attention has been put on the value of Ross’ contract and the fact that people are jealous of his salary.  And with a great plan in place it looks like Georgie could be making her celebrity money.

As for comedy, well, let’s just keep it clean, decent and with a stiff upper lip chaps, otherwise the media intelligentsia will hound us down with a front page spread that will rattle England’s green and pleasant land.  After all, when the programme was aired it received hardly any complaints.  Obviously the Mary Whitehouse brigades quick to act.  This was followed by other titles, including The Mail on Sunday.  After that, and with the help of four willing horsemen hacks sharpened  their pencils and got to it, with the help of:

 ·      A few shocked Tories

·      A handful of politicians willing to play to the gallery

·      A BBC without balls

·      A dash of tears.

The finished article, surely with the support of somebody acting for Georgina, will ensure that we no longer are allowed a laugh.  The BBC reported yesterday in a clever way, by asking people that were going to the filming of ‘Gardeners World’ for the thoughts.  Their answers were to be expected: “Vulgar”, “Ross is over-paid”, “They should be sacked”.  At the same time a crew asked people going to the filming of ‘Never Mind The Buzzcocks’ for their thoughts.  Their answer differed just a bit, with more “blown out of all proportion” and “they’re not that funny anyway”. 

And what will happen after the furore dies down?  Well, it’s obvious, Georgina’s bank manager will be happy by her improved bank balance, her PR will be thrilled by the exposure received and will hope to line her up fronting some TV programme, Ross and Russ will go into hiding – making money elsewhere and readying themselves for a comeback to ITV or Channel 4.  Remember how Moss returned from the scandals of her and Pete, with big cash offers everywhere?  Exactly!

Still, I do wonder if Georgina’s PR saw the size of the snowball created.  Wouldn’t it be even funnier if Andrew Sachs knew all along about the plan.  Now that would be comedy!

In an interview in yesterday’s Media Guardian, new BBC Five Live controller Adrian Van Klaveren confirmed that all of the stations daytime shows will by 2011 be broadcast from it’s new base in Salford, Manchester.  Surprising this is not. Unwelcome it most certainly is.

The move to Manchester’s purpose-built Media City has been in the air since the renewal of the BBC’s Charter way back when.

At the time the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) believed that the BBC had to part of the community, it had to be spread and shared with the nation. Or at least, thats what it sounded like. Needless to say that when it came to renegotiate the renewal of its Charter the BBC found themselves in quicksand. Incumbent Director General Mark Thompson, while at Channel 4, stated that Auntie had a “jacuzzi of cash”, something that came back to haunt him when he was in negotiations with the DCMS.

The BBC was going to move and there was nothing that could be done about it. Really, it was a case of Deal or no Deal. Who knows where the idea came from, but, like it or not the BBC was going to lift up some of its interests and move them to Manchester, and as we have discovered Five Lived is one such station. The question is how much has this been thought out?

Would the presenters move? The producers? The staff? If they were to, and here’s the crunch, for a station that prides itself in, not just news, but debate and talk shows, how would it go about securing speakers and spokespeople for it’s shows? After all, government departments are based in London, head-quarters for unions, companies, financial institutions are based in, wait for it, London.

So, remembering this, does the move to Manchester signal the end of face-to-face studio debate?  Van Klaveren has already signaled his dislike for Paxman-esque style interviews. So maybe, just maybe, the Five Live news that debates, analyses and dissects news will be dead sometime soon.

Good talk radio requires people. But the move to Manchester leaves the spokespeople behind. And as common as down-the-line interviews might be in PR, interviews with people in the studio are still needed. Moving away from the centre of business, government is not right.

But, the decision has been made and it looks like these ISDN are not just here to stay, but are set to increase, making debate that much more impersonal, which is what the BBC is becoming, impersonal and distant.

Old skool v new media

We had another great CIPR Greater London Group event last night with BBC Head of Online Journalism Pete Clifton, Telegraph.co.uk Shane Richmond and PR Blogger Stephen Davis discussing the impact of social media on journalism and PR.

Facebook group members sent questions that were posed to the panel.

We had a very good debate and a lot of counter points from both sides of the fence.

The first question picked up on a leaked story that appeared in Press Gazette that said that The Guardian, of all places, was going to cut back its numbers of traditional reporters in order to focus more on new media.

The view was that The Guardian was doing what The Daily Telegraph had done in preparation of its move to Victoria a few years back. Both Pete and Shane stated that integrated newsrooms are the way forward and that the days of the traditional journalism were ending.

Stephen made a great point that PRs are just, well, lagging behind stubborn old hacks in adopting new media and social networking. Petedid share with us his experience in getting the BBC to change the way that it’s newsroom works. Really, as I understood it, a case of dragging a child kicking and screaming forward.

We then went on to discuss if social media has the potential to restore trust in the media?

Social media was very much running a tightrope, between gossip that media can’t run because of the lawyers. Having said this media organisations now find themselves with a tool that can tell it readers and viewers why they have decided to make such an editorial decision. High profile journalists like Robert Peston and Nick Robinson can go into detail on a story that they are running. Pete Clifton gave the prime example of how the BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson ran a story from the White House on his blog from his blackberry. A case of where social media gave him the opportunity of reporting a gaff by President Bush as it happened. The result of which led the White House Press Office from effectively banning him.

But what about non-aligned bloggers that are not members of the media pool? Well, as was said, they have a duty of been as careful about their stories as trained journalists, especially those that have good authority ratings. Getting stories right is a must for everybody.

Interestingly enough though when Stephen Davis was asked who would he give a story to, a journalist or a blogger with a high-authority rating – only choosing one of the two, Stephen said a journalist (he wanted to issue a story to both). Shane came in and asked why not a blogger first given that they are, to all intense and purposes, a journalist.

Finally that tool of our trade came in for debate, the press release, or as it often is, the pr release, given that they are often written in dour language. The question was, is it dead?

The answer, well, as you’d expect was a no. Not yet. Sending cold press releases to journalists is a no, yet the same thing is done to bloggers. And the results aren’t just bad for relations, they can be damaging. The rule of thumb is, develop a relationship with them, ask them if they want to receive press releases, treat them as individuals. Email them as people. Bloggers are influential, like leading columnists. So treat them with respect.

So a lot of debate, a lot of dicussion, some controversy and an equal amount of profanity. All in all, another great night, so if you missed it and want to come to the next event then join the 
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