Bournemouth University has just announced a series of fully-funded PhD scholarships.
One of the projects that has been awarded funding will be under my supervision, entitled: “News, the Internet and Political Protest: Al-Jazeera, BBC and Reuters Reporting of the Arab Spring and its Aftermath”
Matthew Eltringham:
In the last decade or more, the pressure of diminishing resources and increasing output has taken away the opportunity for journalists to do their job properly: to get out of the office and talk to real people about real things.
But the social web has given us a second chance to reconnect with people – albeit in a virtual way – and we should grab hold of that opportunity with both hands. Collaborative journalism, networked journalism, distributed journalism, mutualised journalism – call it what you will, this is the real prize that social media offers media organisations.
We should grab it with both hands, because if we don't the audience will grab it for themselves.
Erik Huggers explaining BBC's new 'product' centred strategy:
It's a self-contained entity within BBC Online, which unites technology and editorial to meet a clearly defined audience need. Each product has a simple and concise proposition that's easily understood by the audience, is kept up to date, fits the overall strategy for BBC Online and has clear editorial leadership.
It's a strategic approach for the service as a whole – framed by what our audiences need from the web, rather than what we produce today for TV and radio – a change in culture for BBC Online.
Audiences will see products organised into five content areas (portfolios) supported by a common technical platform.
Steve Herrmann, editor of the BBC News website:
What’s new:
• a fresh, updated design, with more space for the main stories of the day
• better use of video and images
• clearer and more prominent labelling and signposting of key stories, whether you are on the front page or a story page
• a better indication of which are the most recent headlines
• easier ways to share stories with others, for those who wish to, on social media networksAs I also mentioned in my earlier post, some important things are staying just the same, for example:
• all the content is still there: the best of the BBC’s journalism in text, audio and video?
• the latest news headlines will be as quick and comprehensive as ever ?
• accuracy remains at the core of our editorial values?
• we’ve been careful to keep things simple and easy to use; you have told us how important this is
From: BBC News website redesign (2)
Paul Sissons, UX Team Lead, BBC Future Media & Technology:
Fundamental to the new GVL is bold, strong type and crisp, un-cluttered layouts. The gradients and textures of “Web 2.0” are gone, and everything is pared down to the minimum required for delivering news.
….
With an incentive, users will scroll. If that proves a positive interaction, it’s something that could become habitual. So rather than design our indexes and front page with everything at the top of the page, we are encouraging scrolling by putting richer content within stories and towards the bottom.
….
Across the project, there was a concern that larger images, bolder headlines and more links could make pages overbearing. Having a column of white at the right-hand side of a story’s body was one of the design decisions made explicitly to counter this.
From: BBC News website redesign: telling the story
Erik Huggers, Director of BBC Future Media & Technology:
This has been a major engineering project for the Future Media and Technology Division and I believe it’s a great example of engineering and design working hand in glove with editorial – a way of working that I talked about at the Media Guardian Changing Media Summit earlier this year. To give an example we have improved the content management system, which will make it easier for journalists to upload their story and add video and pictures to it more quickly and gives them better control of the layout.
Steve Herrmann:
And we've done something which will be less obvious to you, but hugely important to the journalists working on the site. We've completely rebuilt the content production system (CPS) which we use to create content and run the site. The new version of the CPS is designed to be easier to use and – crucially when we want to get stories out to you fast – quicker too. It's also built to be more flexible, so it should be easier to keep the site evolving, and to produce the content in ways that work well on other platforms, such as mobile.
