the mantelpiece - mark waddington blog

online news within traditional newsrooms

The following quotes are a response to the notion of one converged and combined newsroom from a document called Convergence calls: Multimedia storytelling at British news websites By Neil Thurman and Ben Lupton

“A website has to be constantly worked at ... If you have people who are in their heads in both places, the website doesn’t get the attention it needs.”  Anne Spackman Times Online Editor 

"A website needed a separate team—one whose role is to innovate. “We feel you need a small vanguard group who are learning new technology or thinking about new types of journalism”  FT.com editor James

Download pdf document

As an online editor myself I have found that the theatre and excitement of a live TV news show overshadows the web requirements. Partly because there are no dramatic deadlines and audiences are smaller.

TV Editors are sometimes reluctant to break news on the web because they don't fully accept it as a primary output. I also think there is a fear of interactivity and a feeling of being out of control.

Traditional journalists often see the online world as dangerous; Blogging particularly so because it involves opinion and is seen as a world populated by citizen journalists (a disputed term) and crackpots. There is also the real possibility that the public could start to dictate the agenda!  Heaven forbid.

So my feeling is that the two way, conversational, 'go with the flow' world of the Internet is at odds with the highly controlled world of the newsroom.  Let's see if we can loosen things up a bit

calendar news sound studio

gbitv-soundstudio
Originally uploaded by markwaddington.

A lot of people are leaving ITV right now as a result of the cutbacks. The three of us working on ITV Local in Leeds will eventually be disbanded but we don’t have dates yet. Many people working in ITV Local in other parts of the country have already gone. The expectation is that we’ll have more clarity on March the 4th.

The process of cutting back and rationalising ITV is leading to some technical changes and re-ordering of physical spaces. A proposal on the table is that the BBC and ITV should share some facilities and media. One reporter said that he could imagine we’d all be working out of a shared telephone box!

As this process moves forward I am taking some photos – along with other people – and thought it would be a good idea to upload some of them to a flickr group which I’ve called ITV Turnaround

radio academy leeds: stations may close

Get a hundred or so radio presenters in one room and what do you have?  A lot of talking!  Had last night's event been run by TV people there would have been more posh frocks and Champaign but here at Tiger Tiger in Leeds it was beer and banter.

The winners of the Radio Academy Nations and Regions Awards was Rother FM – apparently for the second year running, praise given for their exceptional contributions to the local community.

Andrew Harrison of The Radio Centre was the guest speaker and he opened with comments about the hard times facing commercial radio. He said that there were more radio stations than the sector could support (he took us through his sums) and said he expects some local commercial stations the close this year.

I couldn’t help thinking how much like Greg Dyke Andrew looked.  And then following my instinct to make connections I reflected on how many former marketing people are now running broadcasting in the UK. There is Andy Duncan at Channel 4 and Tim Davie at BBC Radio, to name but two.  It just goes to show, selling skills are valued in the industry now –  it’s gone from a being a producer led industry to one which is marketing led, and for good reasons I’m sure.

elements of permanent value

Andy Duncan, the Channel 4 chief executive says, "The established economic model is inevitably in decay. But, just as the door is progressively closing on the old linear model of one-to-many broadcasting, a new and much bigger door is opening on the global content market”

I wonder if this is true?  Whenever there is the whiff of something novel and exciting we are often too quick to dismiss the past as irrelevant. I actually think he’s wrong and that the old linear model of one to many broadcasting may become more important not less.

I think it is true that old fashioned TV has to shuffle round a bit to make way for new media, but I’m sure there is plenty of room at the dining table.

What good old fashioned linear TV can give us is the equivalent of the contrast between TV and cinema. Both are quite different mediums offering a distinctive experience.  I believe that as TV goes high definition there will be plenty of demand for one to many. 

The great big shared experience that TV can offer is a precious thing. There is nothing quite like waiting for the release of a big show or a live event with its accompanying sense of excitement. Remeber the Easternders, everybody's talking about it campaign.  This kind of show is very marketable.

I would like to think that as we move forward we don’t dispense with the past but refine it to those elements which are of permanent value.

See article in  New Media Age

A conversation with a media student

In the last week or two I have been contacted by a number of media students wanting to know how ITV works in the regions and how they can equip themselves for future employment. It comes as a shock when they realise that much of what they are learning is subject to the same amount of uncertainty as the professionals are facing.

Regional ITV News continues to be under pressure as the company tries to find ways to cut costs. The staffing cuts in the Leeds newsroom have been among the most painful in the company’s history (we are in the middle of them). 

Public service on ITV is at serious risk unless the industry can come up with a creative way of making it viable.  Only today ITV has been communicating with staff on future proposals for making ends meet.  One idea is that the BBC and ITV should share some media and facilities – maybe working out of the same buildings.  Never before has there been such a real possibility that the BBC could be the only regional TV news broadcaster. The newspapers are of course including video on their websites but this is a long way from being established as an alternative to regional TV news. (Personally I think collaboration and partnerships are a good idea and much more in keeping with the way new media is heading)

Today we learned that advertising budgets have been revised down by the greatest amount ever, according to the latest Bellwether survey (a quarterly survey of marketing spend). Online accounts for almost 10% of all advertising spend but it suffered a record reduction in spend, dropping 7%. However this was a smaller drop compared to other media. And so even the ITV’s online services like ITV Local are under pressure.

Competition between ITV and the BBC has in the past been very strong but as the commercial realities unfold the financial contrasts between the BBC and ITV are significant.

Re-inventing ITV under these conditions is extremely difficult with the company (in my opinion) reluctant to take risks and gamble any new cash on innovative services without guaranteed financial returns.  ITV Local, held to be important to the future of ITV, is being run on a relative shoestring with many of the staff who pioneered the service becoming victims of the cutbacks.

Technology, it is hoped, holds the key to the success of ITV in the regions. Like many broadcasters, staff are becoming multi skilled. To give you an example reporters are now becoming video journalists (VJs). For simpler stories reporters will operate as a one person crew taking with them a lightweight camera.  They will do their own shooting, their own reporting and their own editing. While a theoretical solution, implementing the technology and training required is expensive and time consuming process.

The inclusion of user generated content, citizen journalism and more localalised information are not just a strategies for engaging with audiences, they are things the audiences are coming to expect. So as well as finding a way though this business challenge the whole culture around how we consume and use the services is changing.

Newsroom staff everywhere are working across a number media. Radio, TV, Online, text & design are being handled by staff who where previously specialists. As well as technical experts they will also have to perform as managers and content editors safeguarding the integrity of the output.  And so the challenge is to improve the service, cut the costs and move quickly.

None of this is intended as a criticism of my employer who I think is putting some genuine energy and creative thinking into reforming its activities. All this bodes well, i'm sure.

But there is an equation which says that of quality, volume and speed you can only achieve two of these without compromising the third.  It’s a tough one.

UFOs over Yorkshire

I'm sitting in the ITV newsroom processing emails and from viewers who say they have been seeing UFOs over Yorkshire and Linconshire over the festive period.

All this has been prompted by a damaged wind turbine which the Sun reported as being the victim of a UFO. It certainly says something about news values and what inspires viewers most. read just a few of the contacts here

Met Space

Just been to a lunchtime gathering at Old Broadcasting House in Leeds. Leeds Met have made it into a very exctiting creative third space co-working environment.  Bristling with Apple Macs, comfy chairs and creative bods at all levels - seasoned professionals rubbing shoulders with students - generally sharing knowledge and ideas. They will also be hosting Ignite which looks like highly stimulating discussions on creative themes. Thanks to Linda for showing me round, I shall be back.

ITV News - behind the scenes

ITV is splendid in many ways. It has a long tradition of producing popular programmes with a common touch (and I mean that in a complementary way).
The 6pm regional news programme, Calendar, has a 40 year history and some notable presenters, among the most famous of whom is Richard Whitley. Having grown up with the programme I now find myself sitting in that very newsroom.

Today though I have to report that the mood is sombre with redundancies becoming a reality for many of the journalists and staff here.  There are in fact two Calendar news programmes – one for the south of the region and the other the North. These two programmes are being merged into one. And reporters are becoming multi skilled shooting and editing their own footage.

Even in my own area, the ITV Local website, many posts are being lost.

I have to be careful what I say because it would be wrong of me to reveal too much, so I will stick to what is already common knowledge.

I still believe local news is important, particularly as viewers are demanding more sophisticated access to information about their own communities but I’ll go into this in due course. In the meantime I thought I would dedicate a few posts to behind the scenes at ITV.  First vid is a quick camera side view of a regional ITV 1 news studio.

Calendar North studio from markwaddington on Vimeo.

The Class System and Me

Watching John Prescott’s journey through the English class system the other night reminded me of moving to London to start a job with the BBC. The first question I was asked as I entered the office was, did I go to Oxford or Cambridge. In order to get the job – as an announcer – I had to deliberately suppress my Yorkshire accent. 

This was the 80s and the BBC TV announcers were nearly all white middle class men who talked Oxbridge.  These men, it seemed to me, were treated as authority figures. Women, it was felt, didn’t have enough authority in their voices; depth was what was needed. Unlike today the announcers used to have technical control of the output. They used to sit at a mixing desk which enabled them put the programmes on or take them off. This seemed to me to be indicative of their power.

The BBC then was highly centralised with the regions being treated as inferior – the more so the further north you went. These were the days when the whole nation watched the same programmes from London. It was not uncommon for twenty million people to be watching BBC ONE.

A short time into my job my Yorkshire accent began to creep back and this was noted (with concern by some). My annual report at the time charitably records, ‘Mark has a slight northern accent, this is not unpleasant’.

I’m not conscious of my class (whatever it is) but looking back I think I must have been perceived as a risk. I was a northerner with low educational credentials announcing, among other things, the Queen’s speech and important party political broadcasts.   I wish now I’d had the courage to interject a working class comment or referred to the Queen as Betty, perhaps.

Brand, Ross and the BBC

I like both Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross and want to jump to their defence over the Andrew Sachs affair and say why it’s good for the BBC brand.

When I was working at BBC Broadcasting and Presentation there was a lot of discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of the BBC brand image.  I remember in one session we looked at a list of positive perceptions – you could trust the BBC, it was reliable, informative, high quality and so on.  Then against each of these we recognised that there was a corresponding negative. As well as being excellent the BBC was also perceived to be dull, safe, slow, unwilling to take risks. They were two sides of the same coin, as they say.

The brand changes that took place as a result of these conversations were a turning point. The BBC ONE colours were changed from blue to red and RADIO TWO recruited stars who were known to be outspoken.  Some years before I had been offered a news presenting contract at Radio Two but turned it down because at the time the station was so old fashioned and boring (I thought) – now just look at it!

The point I am making is that there are serious risks associated with being intelligent, reliable and trustworthy. For a broadcaster which has built a reputation on these qualities they are marching towards the death trap of being too safe.  The likes of Brand and Ross are there to mitigate a greater risk.  And so it may be that the BBC is the one place  that really needs them.

While I can’t agree that making obscene phone calls was a good idea I can see that with Brand and Ross you get an honest voice – no spin, corporate lines or hidden agendas.  For that I value them.

This is the video on the Radio Two web site!!