The Internet is proving a bit of a goldmine for the BBC, at least according to the head of BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the Beeb. Speaking in London this week, BBC Worldwide Chief Executive John Smith said he was initially hoping to make at least 10 percent of its total revenues from the Internet, but has now realized this target is too low. We think we will be

The editor of the web newsroom of The New York Times, Fiona Spruill, has been answering questions from readers all week. As someone who manages the Times’s web newsroom, made up of the 60 producers and editors responsible for publishing NYTimes.com 24 hours a day, she has some sound advice for budding online journalists: Our web newsroom is closely integrated with the print newsroom, so I am looking for people

The BBC has joined with other UK broadcasters to offer a commercial portal to British television shows. The on-demand service, under the working title of Kangaroo, brings together the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. All three broadcasters already offer programmes over the Internet but only in the UK. This international venture reflects the strength of British broadcasting. Ashley Highfield, director of BBC Future Media and Technology. offers an insight into

Lists are always popular so the Online Journalism Review has put together the top nine gifts for online journalists. Among the suggestions are a Belkin Tunetalk Stereo to record interviews on your iPod, a GPS unit from TomTom and, my favourite, a Vespa LX150 scooter. The number one gift, says OJR, the Apple iPhone. No doubt, the iPhone is an object of desire, but I am not sure how useful

The CBC in Canada is following in the footsteps of the BBC and moving towards bringing together television, radio and online. Its English-language services are being formally integrated under one big boss, its current English television vice-president, Richard Stursberg. The purpose is look at ways of having the three media arms work more closely together, such as the CBC is trying out in its integrated news operation in Vancouver. It

Only last week, yet another big news organisation set up shop in Second Life. CNN opened an I-Report hub in the virtual world, following the the footsteps of other news media such as Reuters. Life4U, which describes itself as the first magazine TV programme in Second Life, reports on how old media is adopting new media

I’m very pleased to say that a paper I co-wrote with Neil Thurman of City University, London, has been accepted for publication by the journal, Journalism Practice. The paper, “A clash of cultures: The integration of user-generated content within professional journalistic frameworks at British newspaper websites”, examines the response of the leading UK newspaper websites to user-generated content. It was presented at the Future of Newspapers conference in September in

The big new story in Vancouver is the release of an amateur video that recorded the death of a man after he was stunned with a Taser by police in October. The dramatic 10-minute video shows four RCMP officers talking to the man, Robert Dziekanski, at Vancouver International Airport, and then stunning him. The video was shot by eye-witness Paul Pritchard with his digital camera and it has sparked much

Farewell then, BBCNews.com. As from today, the BBC News website no longer exists as an autonomous, editorial unit within the BBC. Instead the BBC has created a multimedia newsroom, integrating output across TV, radio and online. On the BBC Editors’ Blog, Peter Horrocks explains the rationale for the decision, arguing: We have a new system that allows the great strengths of each of our editorial areas to create an even

The young journalists behind Inkling Magazine are into science reporting because, as they say in their tag line, “science rocks”. One of the founders of the science blog, Anne Casselman, took part in the Future Directions in Science Journalism conference over the weekend at UBC. During a session about why people go online for science news, she gave an illuminating insight into Inkling’s readers. The site gets some 40,000 page