- Richard Jackson
- 19 Oct 07, 03:46 PM
Nicky Campbell was live in Paris this morning - and will be appearing on Drive this afternoon and will present Weekend Breakfast from Paris tomorrow too.
But some e-mailer/texters weren't happy. Broadly they were asking why waste money sending him to Paris - and to add insult to some people's injury - he's Scottish so what's it got to do with him.
I'm the programme editor and there were discussions with the controller of 5live Bob Shennan as soon as England qualified for the final. Last weekend Matt Smith had presented the Breakfast show on Saturday and Sunday from Paris - and we agreed that England's appearance in the final merited similar treatment.
Why? Well, 5live has the rights to commentate on the so across the station we've been keen to follow the tournament in detail and give maximum exposure to our coverage. Having a presenter like Nicky enables us to report more effectively on the build-up to the event. This is arguably the biggest sporting event featuring a UK team since the last rugby world cup final.
Having a presenter there enables us to get better guests (people prefer talking face to face), it enables us to have access to fans and hopefully it gives people listening a sense of the atmosphere in the run up to the event. This morning we spoke to Victor Obogu and Brian Moore, to English fans and South Africa supporters. We were able to reflect the level of interest in France and report on the search for tickets.
For those who accuse Nicky of going on a "jolly" you'll be glad to know we are working Nicky as hard as possible. He hasn't got a ticket to the game - and will have to dash back to present his Sunday morning TV programme The Big Questions.
5live programmes aim wherever possible to be live at major news and sports events. We believe it leads to better programmes. This is what the judges of the said "(5live Breakfast) has a great sense of movement and being "out there" and is the perfect antidote to the normal studio bound fare at that time of day. Its take on sport is unique and, in Nicky Campbell, it has someone who is equally at home as a presenter or a reporter. His snatched interview with Colin Montgomery at was one of the broadcasting highlights of the year."
For those worried about the cost, believe me we do our upmost to do these OBs as cheaply as possible and the fact that the final is in Paris means the costs were not excessive.
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Richard Jackson is editor of Five Live Breakfast
- Peter Barron
- 19 Oct 07, 10:30 AM
On Newsnight we're used to the occasional bad review in the public prints. We had a stinker this week in the , but it included a new and stinging criticism.
Rachel Cooke's piece took me to task for not blogging enough. "Like all أغر؟´«أ½ programmes", she wrote "it is fighting for its budget and has been told to get interactive, which is enough to make anyone tired (it speaks volumes that Peter Barron, its editor, posts his blog only every ten days or so)."
I'm pretty sure my hit rate is higher than that, but went straight to the New Statesman's to see how it should be done. Maybe I missed it, but I couldn't find a single blog entry by Rachel (although to be fair she has blogged twice - once in and then again in - in the Observer) or her editor John Kampfner. There are plenty of different views about the value of blogging - and perhaps you'll let us know what you think the optimum level of regularity should be - but I've never met a blogger yet who was doing it because they'd been told to get interactive.
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
- Steve Herrmann
- 19 Oct 07, 10:18 AM
We've introduced a minor change to the way this blog works. Until earlier this week, the daily record of when the أغر؟´«أ½ appears in the news has appeared as a separate blog item. Now those details appear in the right hand side of the blog.
On any given day, the أغر؟´«أ½ is mentioned in literally dozens of articles in the newspapers, and for 18 months now we have been handpicking some of the most interesting. The goal has never been to provide a comprehensive list - if that's what you want, there are ways you can find that on the web. We just pick some of the most notable - and we will continue to do just that, whether or not they are critical of the أغر؟´«أ½. Doing it this way, via tagging from , will hopefully provide a more useful service to the online community. If you click on the link at the bottom of the column, marked "", you'll see the page on Delicious where the links live, along with an archive. If you use that service, you can add us to your network. You can also add an of those stories to your own blog, RSS reader or other page.
Incidentally, we plan to introduce a similar service on some of our correspondent's blogs, where they can highlight articles on the web they have been reading. And from the other perspective, if you want to use del.icio.us (or a number of other services) to bookmark your favourite pages on our website, we recently introduced social bookmarking options on أغر؟´«أ½ News pages (see this posting from my colleague Paul Brannan), and we hope to do this soon on our blogs.
Steve Herrmann is editor of the
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