From Typewriters to Twitter

On Wednesday 3rd December the BBC's technology correspondent, Rory Caitlyn-Jones took the trip back across the Severn Bridge to lecture in Cardiff.

After reminiscing about his time as a student, he described the journalism world he first entered - the 1980's news team: A huge operation with dozens of cameramen, sound men, engineers and technicians. Reporters were flexible and editors were gods of the newsroom.

All of this had the slight whiff of 'golden age' journalism about it. But his point was that in today's chaotic multi-media environment, everyone is doing everyone else's job by comparison. Cameramen used to be cameramen, and sound men did, well sound stuff. The big teams of the 80's have shrunk while production demands have intensified.

I'd like to think the development of the young multi-skilled, multi-platform 'super' journalist is the reason for these cuts in personnel. Or the advance of technology and mans success in harnessing it. But money makes the world go round and the new corporate Murdoch's of the industry have probably a larger part to play.

Nonetheless this brave new fragmented world represents a massive opportunity to get your voice heard. While newspaper sales and TV news ratings are plummeting, websites, social networking sites, and blogs all illustrate the huge opportunity for savvy journalists to increase their broadcasting space.

Adam Curtis, world editor of the BBC News website echo's these sentiments when discussing the power of the Internet after they ran a story of a Sudanese man marrying a goat:

"It seems to be a fine example of the viral nature of the web. A story is picked up and passed on to an ever growing circle of readers – a sort of chain letter in cyberspace".

This leads me to my next topic - give them what they want. Rory told us that 'Man marries goat' is still the most popular story on BBC Online. So where's the problem? It's cheap to run. It's safe to run. It livens up the website with a bit of whimsy. And most importantly, it gives the people what they want.

Unfortunately this growing trend means less time, resources and importance dedicated to stories that matter - those under-reported stories like the 1 million refugees in Somalia in 2007 or the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2008.

This notoriously defines tabloid coverage, expressed perfectly in a memo from the news editor of the Sunday Express, Jim 'Mad Dog' Murray, which was leaked in the summer of 2003: "We are aiming to have six sex stories a week". The most obvious impact of 'give them what they want' is that it promotes the trivial: Foreign is boring, war is depressing, and both are expensive.

But this is nothing new. A predacessor of mine in the broadcast group - Tom Williams - wrote a piece detailing the lecture of the then Head of BBC News Interactive, Pete Clifton in 2006

"He revealed that of the 500 or so videos that are put on the BBC News website every week - many of which are gleaned from user-generated content. The most popular tend to be the 'wacky' ones. As a result of their popularity, they appear in the day's 'Most Popular Stories' box - which is on the BBC News front page - prompting viewing figures to escalate further."

So editors are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to deciding their running orders: surrender editorial judgement to the pressures of consumer demand, or risk low viewing figures in the name of traditional news values. Unfortunately under the present financial cloud, I think the, "if we can sell it, we'll tell it" attitude will continue to prevail.

Images used courtesy of 'Demosh' at: www.flickr.com/photos/44222307@N00/1477086299/
and 'Monika's Dad' at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/virtualsugar/371619351/in/photostream/