The BBC College of Journalism is a treasure trove of advice, lessons and tips for any budding or experienced journalist. Outside of the UK, it is only available on a subscription basis. The College of Journalism tends to post videos from events on its Youtube channel. But I recently discovered that some of the lessons available through a dedicated website on the main BBC website. Among the videos are various

George Entwistle, the new director general of the BBC, should recall the recent past as he refashions the corporation for what he calls “the digital revolution.” In his quest for an organisation that can create “genuinely new forms of digital content”, he would do well to look back at the pioneering work of the BBC News website. It has been creating these new forms of digital content since its launch

BBC News television and radio editors seem to have a perennial blind spot when it comes to the web.  A review of the BBC’s  coverage of the Arab Spring in 2011 by the BBC Trust found that broadcast outlets would rarely reference the BBC News website. The study (PDF) found that “the BBC news website provides a significant amount of background material, yet no cross reference was made to BBC online in over 97%

For those like myself who couldn’t make it to London, the BBC has posted videos from its Social Media Summit. I’ve put these together into a YouTube playlist to make it easier to catch up with the discussions. The summit also prompted a lively discussion on Twitter, under the hashtag #BBCsms

It can be hard to understand Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s seemingly delusional rantings. But this is a leader who has sought to turn Libya into a “jamahiriya” – his vision of a state of the masses. During my time covering the North Africa for the BBC in the early 1990s, I visited Libya a couple of times. One of my TV reports from the time sought to explore how Gaddafi was trying

With Libya in the news, I thought I would share this piece I did for BBC News in 1995 about the Libyan economy. As the BBC correspondent in the region, I visited Libya twice and interviewed Gaddafi during one of these trips. It was, by far, the strangest interview I have ever done. We were on standby all day until the call came late in the evening that Gaddafi was

The BBC is back in the news with more talks of cuts and savings. The Guardian reports that BBC director general is looking for additional cost savings of 20% – about £400m – over the next six years. One of the ways Thompson plans to cut costs is by reducing the amount spent on online services by 25%. This might sound like a drastic saving. But it masks the fact that

The BBC’s editorial guidelines have been updated to take account of the impact of social media on journalism. There are three specific entries that offer valuable advice to journalists. The guidelines on the use of photos sourced from social media and personal websites notes that the BBC should consider the sensitivities in using them, even though the images have been published online. It urges journalists to consider whether someone intended the

There is a wealth of material on the present and future of the news media in a report, Brave News Worlds: Navigating the New Media Landscape (PDF), published last week by the International Press Institute (IPI). The 152-page report brings together 42 essays were written by news executives, digital thinkers and educators from across the world. My attention was drawn to a provocatively entitled entry, The Future of TV News Belongs, in Part,

This visualisation of Mark Thompson’s MacTaggart speech highlights the most commonly used two words. The visualisation shows Thompson placing an emphasis on British television, public service, British public and licence fee