The BBC's blogs in numbers as of December 2010

Some say I've spent the last couple of days stealing snowmen...but in reality life is more mundane.

I've been putting on some layers, editing some chapters, putting on some more layers and trying to draw the thesis together.

During the most recent chapter re-draft, I felt I needed a line saying: 'The BBC now has x number of blogs...' and realised I didn't know the value of 'x'.

So some numbers for you taken from this index on the BBC news website. I suppose there may be other blogs lurking in the BBC blogosphere that haven't been added to the list but it looks like a fairly comprehensive round up to me.

BBC Blog Network: Number of Blogs

News - 90
Sport  - 47
TV - 19
Online - 4
Radio - 42
Other - 7
Total - 209

In the spirit of the 'data journalism' age, I've uploaded this data with links to all the blogs in a Google spreadsheet.

Although there had been earlier blogging experiments, Nick Robinson's blog was the first one launched on the dedicated BBC Blog Network in December 2005. 43 blogs were set up within the first year.

"BBC News opinion" on Wikileaks

Regular readers will be aware that one of my interests on blogging and the BBC has been the existence of a grey area between "personal opinion" and "professional judgement".

If you are really underemployed it could form part of a wider exploration of the blurring of news, opinion and analysis.

Here is another little example.

If you ask somebody at the BBC about Jonathan Marcus's latest online article on Wikileaks, entitled 'Bumpy ride for U.S. diplomats', they will tell you that the BBC's Diplomatic Correspondent has written a piece of analysis based on the evidence in which he has exercised his professional judgement. It is his "expert view".

The Small Wars Journal, however, has categorised the article under a section headed "Editorials and Opinion" in its excellent list of links on Wikileaks. In fact, the article is labelled "BBC News opinion" suggesting that one person's "analysis" and "professional judgement" is another's "personal" or "news opinion".

Even if you can demonstrate that the Small Wars Journal is wrong to categorise it as such, it suggests that some audiences are not aware of any distinction.

Plus ça change...?

A mini-nugget from Volume Three of Asa Briggs' History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom.

Briggs notes that at the beginning of the 1940s the BBC's 9’O clock News reached between 43% and 50% of the population.

In the World's Press News, H.G. Wells, (who according to Briggs "loved generalisations"), spoke out boldly saying "the day of the newspaper was done".

In the same publication, Hannen Swaffer said:

"the defeat of journalism by the BBC continues – and will still go on unless newspaper proprietors take intelligent action".

Worth a footnote on new mediums, the end of journalism, and all that sort of stuff.

Links for October all in one go

Sorry good people - not much blogging here this month. There are a couple of my posts up at the Frontline Club on Wikileaks and the U.S. Navy's social media manual if you missed them and you're into that kind of thing.

Expect a few more thoughts on Wikileaks at the Frontline Club or elsewhere soon...

Here's a round up of links that have caught my eye while I've been writing the conclusion to my thesis. (One day, I tell myself, it will end).

Blogging and the BBC

• BBC Political Editor, Nick Robinson wins blogging comment award. But Left Foot Forward is not convinced...

Blogging and Murdoch

• For what it's worth, Rupert Murdoch on blogging and journalism:

“Now, it would certainly serve the interests of the powerful if professional journalists were muted – or replaced as navigators in our society by bloggers and bloviators. Bloggers can have a social role – but that role is very different to that of the professional seeking to uncover facts, however uncomfortable”.

Blogging and the truth

• MP Nadine Dorries explains that her blog is "70% fiction and 30% fact", but also argues that it is a tool for her constituents to get to know her better. I wonder how that's going...

Blogging and Andrew Marr

The BBC's Andrew Marr describes bloggers as though they are some kind of obscure mammalian curiosity being uncovered in a wildlife programme by David Attenborough:

"A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother's basements and ranting. They are very angry people.

Moving to a national level, most Brits, we discover, are angry (and some drunk)...

"OK – the country is full of very angry people. Many of us are angry people at times. Some of us are angry and drunk. But the so-called citizen journalism is the spewings and rantings of very drunk people late at night.

"It is fantastic at times but it is not going to replace journalism."

A section on guidelines, guidelines and guidelines (not necessarily in that order)

• The BBC's Editorial Guidelines are launched.

• The Guardian publishes some new social media guidelines for their journalists...

• ...while the BBC's Helen Boaden has to point out in an email to staff that Twitter is not a place where BBC journalists can express their political views on this, that and the other. Melanie Phillips is hyperbolically outraged in a way that only Melanie Phillips can be:

"I remember a time when it was considered a hanging offence for a BBC news operative to express a political opinion in public. Ah, those were the days, eh. Different country."

Rare gem of useful research material

• More practically, this is a great round up of research into linking by traditional news organisations.

Comments

• Reuters tries to improve comments by bringing in points (and prizes?)

"Our new process grants a kind of VIP status on people who have had comments approved previously. When you register to comment on Reuters.com, our moderation software tags you as a new user. Your comments go through the same moderation process as before, but every time we approve a comment, you score a point."

And finally...

We'll end on the kind of disconcerting note you only get when you accidentally sit on a piano with this article on the troublesome world of blogging the drugs war in Mexico.

A live-blog: not a "finished product" but still a product

Adam Tinworth wrote a blog post in reply to my post yesterday about liveblogging.

I hope he won't mind me copying his post in full because it will make more sense and I think there are some interesting avenues of discussion which hadn't at all crossed my mind when I wrote my post:

"Daniel Bennet's posted some thoughts about the art of liveblogging. It's an interesting read but I would like to suggest that there's a false underlying assumption in the post. He seems to be assuming that a liveblog is, once the event is done, a finished product. And in my experience as a liveblogger, that not how it actually functions.

It's pretty rare that a live-blogger is the only source of coverage. When I'm live-blogging a conference, I'm usually part of an ecosystem of bloggers, both live and analytical, people who are tweeting what's being said, Twitter discussions, and then analytical posts that follow on from the liveblog. But that requires a viewpoint that sees all the coverage, not just the coverage on your own site. And not just that that appears on your own site. This is a viewpoint many in the traditional media seems to struggle to adapt to. :-)

In essence, a liveblog is not a finished product - it's the first step towards a record of the event, part of a large pool of raw material that will be collated, aggregated and analysed after the event.

It's all about the ecosystem..."

Earlier I commented on his blog in reply. But as he pointed out it might be better as a blog post so this is it:

"I have to admit I wasn't really thinking about the overall coverage of the event when I wrote the post, although it's probably a more interesting angle(!) and it certainly leads on from what I was saying.

I was rather narrowly looking at live-blogging from the perspective of somebody updating a blog and the challenges of doing the best job that they can. Which I think is still worth thinking about. Even if you are right to point out that a live-blogger is often one of many offering a raw representation of an event, surely, the eco-system will only benefit from some reflexive practice?

And, (although again I'm afraid I can't claim to have been thinking this at the time), I'd like to suggest that you could have used my paragraph about having more than one person to do a live-blog as evidence of an underlying assumption that coverage of an event is better as part of the ecosystem you discuss!

I don't think I was assuming that a live-blog is a "finished" product, but I think I was assuming that it is nevertheless a product.

If we look at things from The Guardian's point of view, surely they have to view a live-blog as a product (even if it's unfinished and part of a much wider record of events). Ideally, The Guardian needs people to turn to the rest of the ecosystem after they've read their live-blog or if they start elsewhere in the ecosystem subsequently come back to and hopefully stick with their live-blog.

Indeed, part of the aim of a Guardian live-blog is collating the ecosystem, (or at least creating the illusion of collating the ecosystem), as a response to the challenge that the ecosystem represents to their coverage of news and events. This also improves The Guardian's product.

So commercially, I think they do have to try to produce a live-blog as a quality product in order to be a key player in the ecosystem. Which is perhaps why it might be worth reflecting on how their live-blogs could be improved. Otherwise they risk becoming just a part of the rest of the ecosystem.

But I ramble on...I'll leave some space to the ecosystem :)

All eyes on Ed Miliband? Some thoughts on live blogging.

This is no criticism of Andrew Sparrow personally, who is an expert in the art of live blogging for The Guardian, but, if you've ever tried live blogging, you'll discover that it's pretty hard work and not without its difficulties. Even for journalists who have racked up a number of live blogging marathons like Sparrow.

During his latest effort, blogging Ed Miliband's speech at the Labour Party conference, the Guardian journalist offers some "3.40pm instant analysis". Sparrow says he found the speech "less inspiring than I expected".

But he then highlights some of the problems of making an assessment about quite how inspiring the speech was given his preoccupation with frantically tapping out a live blog:

"...although I admit, not having watched it properly (I've just had my eyes on my keyboard, for obvious reasons) I'm not necessarily. (sic)"

Which rather sums up one of the key challenges facing a live blogging journalist. (Perhaps we could finish the sentence for him "...in the best position to make a judgement" or "able to take in everything while trying to write everything". [In fact, the update was subsequently corrected and now reads: "...the best judge"])

Personally, whenever I've done some live blogging I've always felt it would be better if there were at least two people contributing to it to compensate for my own live blogging inadequacies. One blogger could get down the outline facts and key points, the other could provide instant analysis and comment. Perhaps even a third could pull in information from other sources.

But Sparrow told me that he writes most of the material for his live blogs himself. He says that sometimes others do contribute, particularly if a live blog lasts a long time and that a Guardian editor will actually post his copy to the blog. (Presumably the editor does some quick checks before posting.) But in terms of writing the thing, an Andrew Sparrow live blog is essentially (a rather impressive) one-man show.

The advantage of this approach is that it gives the blog a clear voice, and allows one journalist to retain control over the direction of the blog. But I would still question whether there are not occasions when it might help to have more hands on deck throughout a live blog.

Of course, there is also a question of resources here and I wonder how often The Guardian can afford to devote more than one staff member to writing lengthy live blogs especially as they seem to be running them on a regular basis and for all sorts of events.

BBC's cricket correspondent hits blog comments for six

There seems to be something of a backlash against the value of comments on blogs at the BBC. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that existing reservations about comments on blogs are beginning to surface.

Only last month, the BBC's political editor, Nick Robinson, described them as "the biggest problem" with his Newslog blog.

Now cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew has revealed he stopped blogging at the BBC because his posts were "always full of appalling comments". Agnew now publishes a column on the BBC website instead and says he simply wouldn't write a blog open to comments any more - "even with moderation in place".

Agnew's Twitter updates about comments came in the context of an interview (BBC i-Player 7:38:30) he conducted with Pakistan's one-day cricket captain, Shahid Afridi, after yesterday's defeat to England. The interview came at the end of an acrimonious and controversial tour for the Pakistan team and was discussed on the PakPassion website after Afridi apparently became annoyed at one of the questions.

Agnew linked to a comment on PakPassion which accused him of trying "to be clever" in his questioning to incite further controversy around the use of the Decision Referral System (DRS), whereby teams can ask for television replays to overturn the decision of the onfield umpires.

Agnew maintained that he was simply asking Afridi to explain why he wanted to have the DRS in One-Day Internationals. The system was used in the Test series.

Agnew likened the comments on PakPassion to those he would receive on his BBC blog. Interestingly, despite his disillusionment with blog comments Agnew regularly replies to messages he receives via Twitter.