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,

The BBC has made changes to its news website to make its headlines more SEO friendly. The headlines appearing on index pages are short and concise as usual, but clicking through to the story reveals a longer headline with search keywords. For example, the index headline on the story on Google’s Chrome browser is “Google previews operating system”, which lacks search keywords. But click on the story page, the headline

The BBC has started letting their video be embedded on other sites.  The first few videos are available on the technology section of the BBC News website (which I set up in 2001). They include a video on Internet football fans and a report from the Bafta Video Game Awards. As Andy Dickinson comments on an embedded BBC video on his blog, “How cool is that? The BBC said there

One of my research interests is blogs at the BBC, so I was fascinated by the tweets coming from Paul Bradshaw and Dan Bennett on the session on blogging at the internal Future of Journalism conference organised by the BBC’s College of Journalism. Bradshaw outlined the BBC blogs rules: authenticity, single author, impartiality, comments, commitment and  obeying the rules of the blogosphere. By all accounts, the star of the session

Image via Wikipedia There’s somewhat of a contradiction in the latest posting on the BBC’s Editors Blog by Helen Boaden, director of BBC News. Introducing the post, she writes: This week I gave the keynote speech at the e-Democracy conference. You can read what I said below. I would be interested to know what you think. The speech gives an overview of the BBC’s approach to citizen journalism. But even

Image by Getty Images via Daylife The headlines about the BBC this week have been all about Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross, and those prank phone calls. Google News has almost 6,000 news articles on the story. So far the outcry has resulted in the resignations of Brand and Radio 2 boss Lesley Douglas, and a three month suspension for Ross. Much of the media coverage has focused of the

The BBC’s User Experience & Design team is sharing its findings into how people are consuming media. But rather than publish a long report, it offers a visual representation in this infographic: The aim of the project was to understand how people are using media. Among the things that emerged was that a lot of people feel overwhelmed at the amount of choice there is and how  people mixed and

In a sign of the BBC’s attitude to blogs, the corporation has appointed a blogger-in-residence. Internet executive Steve Bowbrick will be blogging for BBC Future Media & Technology for six months. What is interesting about Bowbrick’s appointment is that he is an outsider, or as he puts it: “I realise I’ve made it to 45 years old without ever working at the BBC, and it’s genuinely exciting.” His brief is

I’m speaking at a couple of conferences in Vancouver this week, discussing how public service broadcasters can sustaining citizenship and civil society in an internet age. In particular, I will be looking at the rise and fall of the BBC’s Action Network and propose new ways of moving forward as the BBC prepares its digital democracy project. Friday May 2: When Citizens Decide: The Challenge of Large Scale Public Engagement