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 ready. We were taken to barracks in the capital Tripoli and escorted to a tent in the grounds where the interview would take place.

Gaddafi arrived shortly afterwards, wearing platform shoes that ensured he was the tallest person in the room.

Throughout the whole interview, he did not acknowledge myself or my camera operator, both of us Westerners.

During the interview itself, Gaddafi never once made eye contact with me. It was disconcerting to interview someone who seemed to pretend that you were not there.

I got a sense during the interview of a disconnect between the world of Gaddafi and the world outside of Tripoli. It almost seemed as if his perception reality was at odds with everyone else’s.

There is a clip from the interview in the news piece that provides a little flavour of the interview.

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Sambrook is leaving the BBC to join PR company Edelman as “there’s not another job for me. I’ve run out of road”.

Among his key points:

The internet for breaking and daily news is going to be more important but where is the space on the web for current affairs and investigative journalism? I don’t really see it at the moment.

Here is the full video of the event:

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But this optimism is tempered with a healthy dose of concerns about where journalism is going, according to the survey (PDF) of select members of the Online News Association (ONA) produced by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The online professionals believe that the Internet is changing the fundamental values of journalism, but more often than not for the worse. Still, they are confident that online news will find a way of making money.

Amy Mitchell of the Project for Excellence in Journalism presented the results at the NVision 2009 conference.

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It was a powerful demonstration of the new tools of communication he talked about.

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(Shot on a Nokia N95)

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Image via Wikipedia

In March 2008, more than 17.2 million requests to download or stream BBC programmes were made via the iPlayer.

So perhaps it was worth the £6 million it has cost to develop. The figure emerged in a Freedom of Information request.

As far as I can tell, this is the first time the BBC has put an official figure on the cost of the iPlayer.

The reply from the BBC (PDF) provides some details on the development of the iPlayer:

The basic BBC iPlayer (then called myBBCplayer) trial completed in June 2006. During June 2006 – November 2006 the BBC iPlayer Beta was developed with very limited functionality & user access. On November 14th 2006 BBC launched a limited user access version. Then during November 2006 to July 2007 the BBC developed the beta version of the BBC iPlayer with a walled garden access. In July 27 2007 the BBC iPlayer Beta was aunched.

This timeline ignores the earlier work that went into the project when it was known as the integrated Media Player and tested by several thousand people. And some estimates have put the cost of the four-year project at around £72m.

The information was obtained via the WhatDoTheyKnow site, which offers an easy way to submit Freedom of Information requests in the UK.

It is the brainchild of the pioneering e-democracy group, MySociety. It is in beta but it offers a powerful tool to seek answers from the British authorities.

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(Via Richard Brennan’s Newjiffy)

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(Shot on a Nokia N95 at the International Online Journalism Symposium at UT Austin)

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(Shot on a Nokia N95)

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