BBC | Dan Mason's media and learning blog

Newsroom crisis has to be bad news for diversity

Published: April 30, 2009

I have never met an editor, from print or broadcast, who did not want the staff of his or her newsroom to reflect the diversity of the communities it served.

And I’ve never met an editor who claimed they had fully achieved it.

It is, I have no doubt, one of the reasons for the decline in influence of the UK regional press, particularly larger metro titles, Our communities went through a fundamental change – and we didn’t.

But my real fear is that the situation will get worse, not better.

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Did social media come of age in G20 online coverage?

Published: April 2, 2009

For a few tension-fuelled hours on the streets of London last night, Britain’s national press faced a new challenge. It wasn’t just a golden opportunity to show they could harness the power of social media content, but more a test to see if they were ready to be driven by it.

So lining up the BBC, Telegraph, Guardian, Times and Sky websites next to a hyperactive Twitter #G20 feed made for an evening of drama and, frankly, disappointment.

Those who went with the ebb and flow of content pouring in from journalists and the Twitterverse, using a simple dynamic platform for delivery, won hands down. The losers were those who, in the best newspaper traditions, tried to dictate content and form across static pages.

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Local video: How our communites got caught in the crossfire between BBC and newspapers

Published: February 16, 2009

It’s three months since the announcement that the BBC was to scrap its ambitious plans for local video, after something of a scuffle between the corporation and regional press.

You could hardly say the contest was decided by a knockout. By the time BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons effectively pulled the plug on the £68million proposals, saying the corporation would be focusing on “improving the quality of existing services”, newspaper heavyweights were already elsewhere battling to survive the biggest advertising downturn in a generation.

Spectators left at the ringside, those baffled, licence-paying punters (who hadn’t exactly taken to the streets to demand more local video news in the first place) were left scratching their heads, wondering why they’d been invited to the non-event of the year.

If you ignore the rhetoric, the decision not to go ahead was sound. But if the protagonists had stayed in the ring a little longer, they might just have salvaged something of benefit for local communities.

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