Friday 24 May 2013, 11:30
The popular stereotype of a British ambassador abroad is a linen-suited gentleman gazing at the sunset, gin and tonic in hand, on the veranda of a grand residence in a far-off land.
But if our man in the Panama hat is listening to his Whitehall masters he should now be thinking about taking a photograph of that sunset on his smartphone and sharing it with the world via Twitter.
In December, the Foreign Office published its digital strategy.
As well as putting forward a “digital by default” policy for consular services, the paper also pledges to “take full advantage of digital diplomacy”.
Digital diplomacy. Twenty-first Century statecraft. E-diplomacy. Diplomacy 2.0. The use of digital tools to further foreign policy goals has been given a variety of labels.
In the definition set out by Fergus Hanson from the Brookings Institution in Washington, it is simply “the use of the internet and new information communications technologies to help carry out diplomatic objectives”.
Much of the work of diplomacy has traditionally taken place out of public view (until Wikileaks published more than a quarter of a million US diplomatic cables). So what lies behind this new spirit of...
Read more about Digital diplomacy: here to stay and worth the risk?
Thursday 23 May 2013, 10:42
About 18 months ago I got a call from Radio 1. They wanted to know what the future of news is, for their audience. No big deal then.
The Radio 1 newsroom produces hourly bulletins and daily Newsbeat programmes for Radio 1 and 1Xtra - tailored to its target 16- to 29-year-olds with core news topics around music, technology, entertainment, health and politics. The main Newsbeat editions pack a huge amount into their 15-minute timeslot, and sound like nothing else on the radio.
The future of this service is a fascinating question and one that’s relevant to the entire BBC. The future of news for a 16-year-old turns into the future of news for the bulk of the working population about 25 years later.
Radio 1 has a specific direction from the BBC Trust to “experiment with new technologies”. For News in particular “listeners should be encouraged to… provide feedback, ideas and stories and be offered regular opportunities to engage in debate”.
Conversation was a key component of the next few months, both within the Radio 1 newsroom and with our audience. We wanted to make sure we were sufficiently plugged in and accessible.
Twenty-somethings don’t use email, and figures from...
Read more about Mobile and social countering dip in Newsbeat radio listeners
Wednesday 22 May 2013, 12:15
Almost two years ago I became interested in how Twitter accounts could act as channels for instant communication to a self-selected audience. I wanted to see if I could create audiences without spending hours - or rather seconds many times over - doing all the tweeting.
So I set up Twitter accounts that were fed with content automatically. I used keyword searches that would deliver stories about particular subjects direct to Twitter without my having to do anything. Twitterfeed is an amazing service - even if you only want to provide yourself with news about a certain subject.
With the latter in mind I started with six accounts offering news of technology companies such as Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft. I then added some more topical ideas: an account for the London Olympics in the run up to summer 2012, and one with news of Facebook’s coming stock market flotation. Finally, I went local, with three accounts for news of my area in south-west London.
Weekly, and then much less frequently as I got bored with the experiment, I recorded the number of followers of each account. I finally stopped checking altogether more than six months ago.
Then last week I took another look. All this...
Read more about How to succeed locally on Twitter without really trying
Tuesday 21 May 2013, 12:57
It looks like it is easier than ever to start a media company - with the digital tools available, anyone can do it. But for that very reason it is very difficult to make money.
Potential entrepreneurs are dealing with a public that has become accustomed to not paying for content, and competing with thousands of people supplying it without any kind of commercial interest.
There are, however, UK start-ups that are thriving, as I discovered recently while researching entrepreneurship in British journalism as part of the BBC News social media team.
In this supposedly digital world, new print publications...
Read more about News start-ups need to ‘cut through the noise’
Monday 20 May 2013, 15:37
The mood was sombre at the big UN meeting to mark World Press Freedom Day held earlier this month in Costa Rica. The range of countries where journalists and bloggers live in fear of being arrested, beaten or killed is continuing to grow.Costa Rica is an oasis of relative calm in Central America, one of the world’s most dangerous regions for journalists. In its neighbourhood is Mexico, where about 100 journalists have been killed or have disappeared in the past decade.
In the Syrian conflict, since the start of 2013 several more journalists have gone missing, bringing the total of the ...
Read more about Journalists in danger: signs of a breakthrough?
Monday 20 May 2013, 13:05
Local councils and councillors were in the national spotlight this month when voters delivered some of the most dramatic local election results in recent years.
But what about business as usual? How do you go about covering and scrutinising local government year-round, to turn up the best stories? Two regional specialists offer advice:
Personally, I think successful local government reporting can be distilled into a few rules, says Sharon Edwards.
Make time to talk to people
Obvious, I know, but it's surprising how much this is ignored. If you give people the time and space to talk about themselves...
Read more about Reporting local politics: paperwork, leg work and casual questions
Friday 17 May 2013, 13:22
Seven men are due to be sentenced for rape, child prostitution and trafficking after the lengthy and traumatic Oxford grooming trial which concluded this week.
Many of the details of the abuse of girls as young as 11 were too shocking to report. In the second of two blog posts by BBC journalists who sat through the gruelling evidence in the four-month trial, Alex Forsyth of BBC South describes how the experience affected her:
I am not used to working on a story for more than a few weeks at most. Even on long-running court cases I will dip in and out, attending for the most interesting evidence...
Read more about Grooming trial: ‘I’ve lived and breathed this case, in court and out’
Thursday 16 May 2013, 14:29
The shocking Oxford exploitation trial concluded at the Old Bailey this week with seven members of a grooming gang being found guilty of rape, child prostitution and trafficking. The men will be sentenced next month.
Many of the details of the abuse of girls aged 11-15 were just too disturbing to report publicly, as police involved in the case and journalists who heard all of the evidence in court have explained.
Journalists working in war zones or covering natural disasters understandably sometimes suffer psychological effects, including trauma. The personal impact of spending months on end digesting...
Read more about Trauma of reporting Oxford grooming trial: ‘My worst fears realised’
Wednesday 15 May 2013, 12:45
Last week marked the first anniversary of the ProPublica Patient Harm Facebook group, a crowdsourcing experiment that has changed the way we view community-powered reporting. To celebrate we are taking stock of what we have learned along the way.
First, some background: reporters Marshall Allen and Olga Pierce began investigating patient harm more than a year ago. When we began looking into what was happening to the estimated one million people or more who are harmed in US hospitals every year, we realised there wasn’t an active community for people to openly discuss their experiences....
Read more about Small communities can have a big impact on your journalism
Tuesday 14 May 2013, 12:46
You sometimes hear suggestions that data journalism could be the saviour of journalism. In a world in which people are buying fewer newspapers and so much information is available free, some observers of trends look for anything which could help rescue our noble profession.
Certainly, in a world where citizen journalism could make anyone a journalist, trained reporters are always looking for something which distinguishes the hack from the pack.
Data journalism may well fit the bill. And when you have a broadcaster such as the BBC which is able to turn its online firepower into interactive graphics...
Read more about Mine the data in the digits to find the scoops someone’s trying to hide
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