#wmf: Jon Snow slams leaders’ debates in ‘golden age’ for journalists

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Einar Thorsen

"Three debates and the lifeblood was drained from the rest of the campaign. You used to have spontaneous press conferences (…) but [in 2010] in terms of actually putting out their stalls in which policies are aired in a structured way over three weeks, there was none of it. There were three men everywhere you went.

[...]

The tabloids had a dreadful election because there was nothing to report. All there was to report was the TV debates, they had to hook into TV (…) When the viewer had thought that somebody had won they were then told by the media, the tabloids, they were wrong."

Read on for comments on current and future of journalism.

External link

Del.ici.us tags: jonsnow futureofjournalism future journalism election2010 tvdebates

General election reinvigorates the power of the press – The Guardian

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Einar Thorsen

"The cognoscenti's verdict on the campaign was that, since voters could now directly compare the party leaders for 270 minutes on TV, catching every nuance in their voices, watching every twitch of their facial muscles, press power would drain away. Its partisanship, many judged, would look increasingly irrelevant against the calm, controlled format and inbuilt balance of the TV debates. But the newspapers weren't listening. Most ended the campaign more partisan, more hysterical, less balanced than ever. And after what happened to Clegg, who can say they were wrong?"

External link

Del.ici.us tags: election2010 media newspapers tvdebates

The influence of television on the general election – The Guardian

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Einar Thorsen

"Such sudden excitements and their equally rapid evaporation are characteristic of the internet era. This is indeed the "last-minute" generation who turn up in their hundreds to vote at the thirteenth hour and find that they can't get a ballot paper.

[...]

Tellingly, Cameron said last week that he wanted to forget the tyranny of 24-hour news bites and concentrate calmly and rationally on the business of government.

Is that going to be possible, particularly when an election, the TV debates and the rest may come our way again as soon as this autumn? If so, a key paradox will be exposed once more. While a mass audience listen to the candidates spar, they then split into a thousand postmodern splinter groups to vote. So remember the classic Riepl's law: innovations in media add to what went before rather than replacing it. We've now got the mass and the micro audience … but we've yet to learn how to maximise them."

External link

Del.ici.us tags: peterbazalgette election2010 media tvdebates newmedia socialmedia

By the next election, Fleet Street should get the hang of it – The Observer

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Einar Thorsen

"Ryley [head of Sky News] has changed elections for all our lifetimes – and, though you wouldn't quite deduce it amid much press snarling, he's given newspapers a circulation transfusion as well. What happened for three Fridays in a row after those three TV debate Thursdays? Sales went up between 5% and 10%. You watched, you chatted, you wanted to compare notes: so you bought a paper.

However, take the rest of TV's election coverage through almost four weeks of campaigning and see audiences for everything except the debates shrink away. Don't bother us with sardines when we've supped with the big fish. What's on the cooking channel?"

External link

Del.ici.us tags: peterpreston election2010 newspapers tvdebates

BBC News online coverage of prime-ministerial debate – BBC The Editors

Posted on May 3, 2010 by Einar Thorsen

Online, it looks from our provisional figures as though we had around 3.2m UK unique users visiting the BBC News website yesterday and just under 3m internationally. The live coverage page on the build-up and the debate itself received around 850,000 UK pageviews and the live stream had over 350,000 plays – more than either of the previous two debates.

For the first time, we ran the live stream directly on the BBC News Facebook page, from where it could be shared, and it was also on their Democracy UK page.

We made it available to other sites too – including several UK newspaper sites, Yahoo, Fox News and the New York Times. Following the debate there's an on-demand version also available to embed. On our own site, we're currently linking on the front page to a searchable video and transcript of the debate.

Alongside the video last night, we provided rapid updates via Twitter and our live page from BBC correspondents because we see them as a valuable extra element.

External link

Del.ici.us tags: steveherrmann election2010 tvdebates bbconline bbc