Is this the future of News?

Didn't realise there had been another Social Media Summit. These are organised by the BBC Academy and others as a sort of "state of the business" for those mainly working for mainstream media organisations. Elements of the summit are usually quite interesting, especially as speakers reveal statistics. This last one was in New York.

This time the summit included a conversation on the future of news organisations with 

• Peter Horrocks, Director of BBC Global News (i.e. BBC World News (TV) and BBC World Service (radio)), 
• Mark Thompson, President and Chief Executive, The New York Times and 
• Janine Gibson, Editor in Chief, Guardian US based in New York. 

The session was moderated by David Carr, Media Columnist for the New York Times. What you're watching is simply a registration of the panel session. It's not produced at all. Sound levels are all over the place.

But still.

The first bit of the discussion is rather dry, They simply argue about the effectiveness of media. Is TV news losing out to social media feeds (especially Twitter)? Yes in terms of speed, argues Mark Thompson. But other platforms are ahead of rolling TV news broadcasters. Then it gets interesting.

Jonathan comments: I would argue that curated feeds and contexts in live-blogs on sites like the New York Times and the Guardian are giving me a better overview of major news stories than the rolling news channels. Many of these channels are simply looking at the same social media feeds that I can see in Tweetdeck. It reminds me of the 1990's when satellite enthusiasts, like myself, would watch the analogue satellite news feeds. You could see what Eurovision or Reuters was feeding from its various bureaux around the world, often getting news hours before it appeared on YV news bulletins - and in an unedited form. Most of that has gone away since digital technology has encoded the feeds and it's not worth the financial effort to try and break in to them. Besides, I was simply curious. The better TV channels give context to global events, doing their own investigations and reporting the result.
 Twitter is a great medium for sharing the headline alert and a link. There are a few people I follow for insider gossip. But it's all work related. Really don't care about their private lives. If they think I do, then there is the un-follow button. 

I have drastically reduced my viewing of the rolling news channels. I'm tired of continual updates on events which don't concern me or seeing advertorials disguised as news. They distract me from tracking far more important issues. I get frustrated when we get wall to wall coverage of a particular incident (like Kim Jong-Un apparently saying in March that he is going to target Austin, Texas with his missiles). This is followed by complete radio silence on the story until the climb down leaks out.

For me , the video gets interesting around 16 minutes in, when Mark Thompson starts talking about the appeal of Twitter is its lack of filtering. Peter Horrocks argues that some kind of reputation system on Twitter might interest users. How do we know that tweets from person A are credible? I side with those who want to keep Twitter unfiltered. There are plenty of tools out there that claim to measure reputation. But so far I don't trust any of them. I just follow a few trusted sources and see whether what they tweet turns out to be true. 

BBC has changed its requirement that news stories had to be "broken" by a broadcast piece. Now journalists are  encouraged to file a headline as text in a form that can easily be used as breaking news on air and/or as a tweet on Twitter/ post on Facebook. 

Why is Mark Thompson putting more emphasis on video. Video is so much part of consumer expectation. Bandwidth restraints were the challenge in the past, both contributions and delivery. The award winning Snowfall series was a recent example of a 17,000 word cross media project where a strong narrative was spiced with animations and videos, It worked because it worked in harmony. . 

Peter Horrocks talks about the success of interactive elements on BBC websites. He refers to the British Class Calculator, launched in 2011 but still on line. 

Jonathan: Personally I prefer the consumer based elements to create loyalty  Whilst this app is fun, it's a bit like a quiz in a fashion magazine. Enabling you to calculate whether its worth renting or buying a property would be much more of a public service. Obviously this could be linked to programmes like More or Less or In Business.

Lessons Learned: 

• The Guardian keeps running the numbers on paywalls. For the moment at least, the value of the reach without the paywall (important for on-line advertising) is higher than the expected revenue from a walled garden approach. It might work for the New York Times, but they are probably the exception rather than the rule. Interesting that at times of what they regard as important breaking news (Boston bombings) the first thing they did was to take down the paywall.
• Getting the impression that the Guardian is taking the lead on educating the media in other countries on the value of live blogging, data journalism, and reader involvement. This seems to be taking the place of activities formerly carried out by the BBC Training or BBC World Service Trust.
• TV is still a powerful storytelling medium. BBC believes it is easier for broadcasters to learn to understand text. Newspapers have a tougher time making and understanding video. 
• The value of the home page is still there. But more and more people are interested in live blogging events and find these through social media platforms or Google.
• People who comment on articles on the NYTimes.com turn out to be 50% more likely than other heavy users tp become a subscriber. Some people clearly want to influence as well as engage.
• Interesting to hear the kind of resources the Guardian is putting into live blogging teams and video. It is still tiny compared to print journalism. But it's quietly growing. 

Transparency at the BBC World Service

As someone still interested in the effectiveness of international broadcasting, I find the sessions held by the UK Foreign Affairs Committee to be very interesting indeed. It is all too rare for government committees anywhere to take a serious interest in external broadcasting. In fact, I don't believe any other country goes into this level of detail about what it is trying to achieve through its media efforts abroad.

Although the committee is clearly in favour of a strong BBC World Service, it does manage to pose awkward questions during the hour-long session. I thought the responses by Peter Horrocks were more robust and confident than in 2011, indicating to me that the organisation is climbing out of the savage financial cuts that hit them nearly two years ago.

Facebook strategy needs a serious overhaul though

Four things still surprise me:

1. That the UK government doesn't apply a similar restriction on Chinese media operating out of the UK to the same extent as imposed by Beijing on the Mandarin language service of the BBC. This would mean that accreditation would be granted to Chinese domestic stations but not to CCTV English language journalists.
2. With the growing importance of TV for news, why doesn't the radio output broaden its perspective and make more use of the excellent material running on BBC domestic channels. There is some evidence of this, although why programmes like More or Less have to be chopped into pieces before they are fit for a world audience remains a mystery. And the World Service hasn't run any comedy in this Millennium. Which is a pity because the UK has some of the best political commentary writers and performers on the planet. BBC World is clearly a rolling news channel, with language services providing video material either for use in daily TV shows (like in Swahili) or for on-line. But when it comes to radio, there doesn't seem to be much point in just doing a rolling radio news format in English any more. It's just the same news without the benefit of pictures. And the number of outlets willing to take that kind of international news is dwindling. So reconsider ways in which BBC World Service in English can complement TV output, rather than compete with it. In the battle between radio and TV, radio always loses out, usually big time. To be clear - I don't mean less output, I mean complementary output.
3. BBC Global News seriously needs to review it's on-line and embedding strategy. The Russians and Al Jazeera are well ahead in understanding what YouTube and other channels can do for reach. TV is not the only replacement for short-wave wireless. The Facebook strategy seems to be all over the place. And no-one has found the BBC World Service photostream on Flickr. 3 or 4 views per photo? Either do it properly or not at all.
4. Perhaps more serious, I feel the BBC World Service is moving even further away from a continuous dialogue with the audiences. The Global Minds panel doesn't discuss radio any more but is now focussed on trying to work out my emotional reaction to TV news programmes. The Over to You programme on World Service radio is not a dialogue - not remotely similar to the BBC Radio Four Feedback programme, even though it appears to be made by the same independent production company. For one thing, Over to You seems to disappear from the site after a month (why?) when the Radio 4 equivalent always posts the entire series until the next season starts. The blog idea has been cancelled for a long while. Over to You says it gets lots of letters and phone calls - but how do we know that's really true and not "presenter fluff". What happens to those comments and suggestions? As a listener, I no longer believe I have much influence in shaping the output, despite what it says at the top of the podcast page. And maybe it's time to take the Zune button down?

I also note that the BBC Trust, who will finance the BBC WS from 2014, will be organising a public enquiry into the World Service in the second half of 2013. I wonder if they will accept submissions from abroad ?

I note that the embedding code from the site doesn't seem to work (perhaps it is restricted to UK?) but the video is watch-able on the UK parliament website from anywhere in the world. I appreciate that these sessions are made public.

The BBC World Service still keeps a lot close to its chest. In some cases, that's understandable. Many reporters are working at huge personal risk to themselves and/or their families. But sessions like the one above are important. Why don't other countries do this? Frankly, I don't think they would dare. I think they may be shocked by the testimony that their respective international broadcasters would give. The vast majority of international sound broadcasting has become terribly dull and parochial - if it is still has a presence at all. And modern platforms have only exposed the fact that no-one is listening to it. Which means it is a waste of valuable funds which could be diverted elsewhere.  

The secret BBC Photostream on Flickr

Director of BBC Global News Peter Horrocks on Cost Cutting

You need to fast forward this video to the second half, around 50 minutes in. I think he's right that some of the services at BBC World Service have accomplished their mission and the emphasis needs to shift to other areas. But the cuts being imposed are savage - and the first thing to disappear at times like these are creativity. Hope they take time to make considered choices.