"the tools are all in place"

I wrote a piece for the Press Gazette while I was in London last week. It's about how the BBC plans to use social media - blogs, flickr, youtube, twitter etc. - in their coverage of the build up to the Turkish election at the end of July.

“This is an experiment to look at how a series of international reports can be spread through social media sites and hopefully reach new audiences,” says Richard Sambrook, director of BBC Global News. “We talk a lot about convergence – but we want to explore what that can really mean in international reporting.”

If anybody can remember in the very dim and distant, this is a theme I've been keenly interested in for a number of years. However, as Ben Hammersley - who'll be doing the reporting for the BBC - says, "the tools are all now in place" That wasn't quite the case a couple of years ago. Also, the ever growing popularity of social media site like facebook, twitter and the photo and video sharing sites illustrates just how easy these tools have grown to use. It's not the preserve of techies anymore.

I think the real biggie is time. To do a good social media job - with all the interaction that demands - on top of the old media job could potentially take an awful lot of time - especially the video and the interaction. Have you ever tried uploading a video to YouTube??? One video I uploaded took more than ten hours to appear. Most of the other stuff is fairly quick to do and even automated as Robin points out.

It'll be interesting to see what lessons old media outlets like the BBC learn from this "pilot project" and how, if it is successful, they will get other reporters to follow suit, in full or in part. FWIW - regardless of all the hype surrounding a lot of social media, I think if journalists have to choose one tool from the cannon, let it be del.icio.us - best collaborative research tool out there, IMO. Lastly, links to all my public social media accounts can be had in the top right column.

Update: some buzzback from readers here and here - which is gratifying.

Technorati Tags: pressgazette, BBC, social media reporting, journalism

Comments

[Linda]

Hi Graham - I'd read a f/up to that somewhere else today so it was great to see you were the originator - I think it was a google news alert...I have given up on twitter as life gets in the way.

have a great weekend
Linda

[Linda]

Hi Graham - I'd read a f/up to that somewhere else today so it was great to see you were the originator - I think it was a google news alert...I have given up on twitter as life gets in the way.

have a great weekend
Linda

[Mike]

Great read Graham. Very interesting.

[Graham]

Linda/Mike - Thanks. Not sure I'd give up on Twitter. It takes so little time - I know it's rarely of any amazing consequence, but I do like to hear what friends are up to a few times a day in this very quick and immediate way.

[Neil Baker]

Graham, you ask:

"It'll be interesting to see what lessons old media outlets like the BBC learn from this "pilot project" and how, if it is successful, they will get other reporters to follow suit"

In the meantime, it would be interesting to know what the Beeb's success criteria are for this experiment - How will they judge whether or not it has been a succees? Fine if they've just sent Ben off with a load of tools, some fixers and a budget to see what happens. But it would be interesting to know if/how they plan to review what he actually comes up with. Did Richard Sambrook say anything about that?

[Graham]

No, Sambrook didn't say anything specifically about that. Everyone I interviewed was, quite rightly, keen to play up the experimental end of this. I don't think they can make any judgements until it's over - and not even then - maybe they won't start get a fuller picture until a month or two after the election.

I think it has value. I think there are thousands of ways of doing this. For example, from what I've seen thus far I'm not sure I'd do things the same way Ben is doing. Plus, I'm wondering when and if the interactive part is gonna kick in. I suspect this is where things are gonna get tricky. Social media is about socializing, no? Not seen much thus far, but very early days.

[Neil Baker]

I've emailed Ben to ask him, and I'll let you know if he says anything.

It's interesting to see how news works behind the scenes, but not very. It's also fun to give the audience a chance to get involved in the story, but only up to a point (See Comment is Free for an example of what that leads to!)

I'd rather see Ben using his interactive tools so that the local folks he's writing/blogging about can get more involved in the process, so they're not just passive participants whose views and life experiences are neatly packaged into a convenient narrative. Life is messy and complex, and this is a chance to show that.

e.g. Ben making a video about how he's making a video is OK, but why not also give the camera to a Turkish voter and ask him/her to tell their own story, with some editing help? Or get his local fixer to do a piece about packaging the Turkish election into an "experience" that a visiting foreign correspondent can witness and report?

[Graham]

Hmmm... well, the story behind the story is the angle Ben/Sambrook chose. I think the value of that will perhaps be more back at the Beeb with other Beeb journalists than it is to Turkish people or people interested in Turkish politics. Is this one of the points? Two completely different stories from one job. One that doesn't at all interfere with the other? One that is relatively easy for the journalist to do? Requires relatively little extra work

I hear your point about letting Turkish folk tell their own stories loud and clear - as you know that's something I discussed with Sandeep at livesinfocus.

I think that could really ignite this style of extrafree social media reporting and it is I think what I would've done. I'd certainly try to keep the focus on the people, less on me and less on technique. That said, I'm enjoying what Ben has done thus far - even if I'm not really getting a sense of Turkey yet.

[Neil Baker]

Rather than two stories, you have two roles.

1/ You go in and do your story, using social media to give a behind-the-scenes look at what you did, what you didn't do, who you left out etc. That's all good. this is what Ben seems to be doing.

2/ You also use social media to empower (yuk word) the people you made those decisions about to have their say, and to keep having it, and to argue about it with each other. What did they think about the choices the journalist made, what questions would they like to have been asked, etc. This would make the reporting more democratic and provide that open-ended kind of impartiality that the Beeb is looking for. My point is that you can let the audience interact - fine - but a separate space for the people involved in the story would add an interesting new dimension. I guess you'd need citizens skilled enough in social media to do that, so Ben might have to morph into a reporter/trainer.

[Graham]

I think this might just be possible if this were a print/online piece, but when you're talking broadcast TV, pieces delivered live to camera and all that... I think you could be asking a bit too much of one guy who has a couple of weeks to cover four cities...

But, I think what you should is great. I did have a discussion with one newspaper guy about running kind of 'ongoing' stories, campaign stories if you like which don't have a foreseeable or definite end. I argued given the unlimited space you have on the net that could hand over space to individual journalists and a story that really drives them and let them get really deep into it over time. Would there be a budget for sommit like that???

There's the beginning of something along these lines here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/baefiles