- Peter Barron
- 26 May 06, 05:55 PM
There's plenty of debate these days about the value of blogs. The 成人论坛's head of interactive cheerfully accepts that 99% of all blogs, including some of the corporation's, are "complete crap".
Newsnight's own blogger, Paul Mason (Idle Scrawl), thinks that any TV or radio journalist who doesn't want some form of blog or web presence is mad.
Our own presenter Jeremy Paxman is at the sceptical end of the spectrum. Show me the evidence that numbers comparable to those who watch TV are reading blogs, runs his argument, and I'll start blogging. (Though it's not the case, as reported somewhere this week, that Jeremy refuses to podcast.)
Of course the numbers reading individual blogs will not reach the million or so who watch Newsnight every night any time soon, but it's the two-way nature of them that makes them compulsive and addictive. I don't know any of my contemporaries who would describe themselves as problem TV viewers, but I know plenty who can't leave Technorati alone.
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
- Kevin Bakhurst
- 26 May 06, 05:40 PM
A few weeks ago, News 24 decided to refresh/modernise the countdown music at the top of the hour to give it a bit more zip.
This was done by Dave Lowe (the original composer) and we asked online for viewers' responses. There has been quite a big and very positive mailbag - and several viewers have even taken up our challenge to remix the music themselves.
Kevin Bakhurst is controller of 成人论坛 News
- Alistair Burnett
- 26 May 06, 01:03 PM
In the last couple of days the unrest in the world's youngest country, East Timor, has forced its way up the news agenda with the government there calling for international military intervention from Australia, New Zealand, Portugal and Malaysia to help put down a rebellion by discharged soldiers.
Six years ago, East Timor was in the headlines for weeks when the Indonesians and their local allies went on the rampage as the country voted for independence from Indonesia in a UN run poll. The UN ran the country for a few years then helped the Timorese set up their own insitutions - the idea was to help them stand on their own feet. This now seems to be unravelling.
We decided we should do this story on The World Tonight for a couple of reasons:
a) the country is descending into chaos and there is the human drama of some of the poorest people in the world having to flee their capital city to avoid getting caught in the crossfire
b) with difficulties of large scale nation-building in places like Iraq and Afghanistan in the news, the apparent failure of nation building efforts in tiny East Timor (pop.n 700,000) despite a large effort from the international community, highlights the difficulties of imposing western standards of governence in places torn apart by conflict.
As a news programme, we usually want to get interviews with decision makers (or what we broadcast journos like to call 'real people') in order to try to get a news line out of them. Given the time difference to Timor and Australia from London we couldn't get an interview with either government there so we arranged to do an interview with the Portuguese Foreign Minister (Lisbon is on the same time as us) and arranged for John Taylor, a former UN adviser from South Bank Universtity to come in and explain what's going on there.
That's all fine and dandy but as this is live radio it's never that simple. In the run up to going on air, Robin Lustig was composing his introduction - what we call the cue - he was trying to bring listeners up to date with the background to East Timor since it disappeared from the headlines a few years ago while telling listeners why we were doing the story - ie the appeal for troops from abroad.
Robin and I discussed and revised the cue a couple of times. After I had said we couldn't say Timor became independent from Indonesia (because it was never legally part of the country) but we needed to say the Indonesians had occupied it for 25 years, Robin said he couldn't give a two miunte history lesson. After two attempts we think we got there and we had a 45 second intro that established the background and told us why the story was important on this day ... the art is to make it sound effortless, give the essential context for people to understand the story and do it in less than a minute.
And then the Portuguese FM stood us up - when we called him during the programme, his daughter answered the phone and told us he hadn't got home from the restaurant. It happens more than you think, which is why we have a stand-by item for each programme, and why our listeners heard from the Enron whistleblower after all.
Alistair Burnett is editor of the World Tonight
- Ric Bailey
- 26 May 06, 10:26 AM
Brave - yes, that's one word for it. Foolhardy, that's another. There's probably a really good reason why Question Time has consistently been the most popular political programme on TV for nearly 27 years - without yet having a member of the public on the panel.
Anyway, it looks like that's about to change, thanks to the teenagers who are helping to produce this year's special Schools Question Time edition in July. The search is on for a young panellist up to the challenge of debating hot political topics with top politicians, maybe the odd celebrity and, of course, fending off a probing Dimbleby.
The would-be panellists will have to use their mobile phones to send a one minute video clip of themselves explaining why they should be the new star of QT. As they have to be aged between 18 and 25, hopefully they won't be as technically challenged as I would be attempting that. The final few shortlisted will then go through a mini "pop-idol" audition to decide who sits in the vacant chair.
We're genuinely a bit apprehensive! Nothing quite like this has been done before - will there be 20 entrants or 20,000? What if there isn't a single one who's up to it? Question Time really is probably the most intimidating of programmes for panellists, as plenty of Cabinet Ministers will tell you.
It is actually invigorating to bring a new generation to such an iconic programme and give them the chance to use its format to engage in impassioned political debate. The students from the four winning schools in this year's challenge are busy planning all aspects of their programme. Our experience of the first couple of years of the competition has been that it produces a real buzz and a freshness which makes for a terrific debate. And maybe this year, it'll launch a bright new political career as well.
Ric Bailey is deputy head of political programmes
- Liliane Landor
- 26 May 06, 10:14 AM
Our new - well relatively new - interactive programme World Have Your Say (WHYS)has sent a team to Soweto. Presenter Roz Atkins (Cornish, surfer and part time DJ) editor Mark Sandell (West Ham, ex 5 live but settling in very well thank you) and producer Fiona Crack (ex Online, great cook) decided to hold the global conversation in Nambitha - a restaurant in Orlando West in Soweto.
The programme was simulcast with . YFM is a youth station that plays mainly music, the South African equivalent of Radio 1 you might say. But they broadcast the programme in full and were extremely pleased with the results. So much so that the World Service marketing man in the region tells me YFM are seriously considering taking the programme. They'll stop playing music for an hour every day to play WHYS - here's hoping!
We asked the audience to set the agenda and the discussion revolved around crime rates, corruption, foreigners and xenophobia. It was a great - and revealing - listen. It got away from the usual black/white divide to focus on black South Africans vs other Africans. For the first time publicly, people were talking about ANC corruption and taking the local ANC minister to task.
The guests were certainly engaged and the tone passionate. People rang the programme from all over Africa, the US, GB and from as far as Bangladesh. Lots of texts too. But then some of the guests complained we were painting a negative picture of their country. Roz's line was: it may be uncomfortable but you're setting the agenda - these are the issues you the audience chose to talk about.
Anyway it ended on a high. The editor of the Sowetan newspaper (on first name terms with Mandela, I'm told) said to Mark this was the best conversation he'd heard coming out of Soweto with Sowetans talking to the world. The team is still buzzing.
You can hear the programme here.
Liliane Landor is editor of World Service news and current affairs
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