- Giles Wilson
- 16 Apr 08, 04:07 PM
Behind the scenes quite a lot of work has been going on in the past few months to upgrade the software we use in the أغر؟´«أ½ to produce our blogs. All being well, the upgrade will take place overnight tonight, which means that from 1800 BST until tomorrow morning there will be no new entries on any of our blogs and no comments will be accepted. We are also introducing registration for leaving comments - something I'll write more about tomorrow.
So - as those strange signs outside shops sometimes say - please excuse our appearance while our refurbishment takes place.
Giles Wilson is editor of أغر؟´«أ½ News blogs
- Simon Goretzki
- 16 Apr 08, 12:55 PM
Since Mark Speight's sad death on Sunday the has received over 3,000 e-mails, mostly from children saying how much they admired him and how much he'll be missed.
Clearly this shocking story was something that a vast majority of the Newsround audience were quickly aware of, and something that they cared about deeply. But how much of the detail should Newsround actually report - indeed should we be reporting it all?
That was the subject of a debate on Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show on Monday, sparked by e-mails from parents saying the story was too distressing for a young audience. Interestingly, (and despite what is written in ) Newsround only had a tiny handful of similar e-mails, and to be honest there was never any doubt that we would report Mark's death, but we've been aware from the start that the story raises difficult editorial questions.
Foremost amongst these has been the issue of suicide. After much discussion and after consulting with Editorial Policy we felt uneasy with the idea that some children's first encounter with the difficult concept of suicide would be occurring in relation to a Cأغر؟´«أ½ personality whom they looked up to and greatly admired.
Trying to explain to young children why anyone would take their own life also poses problems. Newsround's usual approach is to explain difficult subjects clearly, in no-nonsense language that kids understand. Yesterday however, it was easy to imagine us explaining that someone had killed themself because they were feeling incredibly sad, and for a child who is being bullied or coping with a divorce or death in their family to then think; "I'm feeling incredibly sad too - is this an option for me?"
It was for this reason that Newsround did something yesterday that goes right against the team's instincts, and deliberately didn't include all the key facts. Our reports did not explicitly state that Mark had killed himself, but instead were written in such a way that children who may have gleaned the facts elsewhere would be able to piece together what happened, whilst the younger end of the our audience, aged around six, would simply understand that Mark had died, that he'd been feeling sad, and that lots of people would be missing him. Did we do the right thing? Were we overly cautious? We're still talking about it, and the debate will no doubt continue.
The Newsround team work in the same أغر؟´«أ½ department that Mark worked in, colleagues were friends of his, and Mark and Newsround shared the same audience. Whilst as journalists yesterday we may have felt unusual, in terms of serving that audience we hope we got it right.
PS: From 1800 this evening (UK time), we'll be doing some essential maintenance to all of the أغر؟´«أ½'s blogs. As a result of this, you won't be able to leave any comments on our blog posts from that time until early morning on Thursday, 17 April. Our blogs editor explains a bit more about this here.
Simon Goretzki is deputy editor of
- Jon Williams
- 16 Apr 08, 10:08 AM
Two weeks ago, during our coverage of the Olympic Torch relay protests in London, the أغر؟´«أ½ broadcast a report from Beijing, suggesting there had been no coverage of the protests, in China. Like much of the coverage associated with the recent trouble in Tibet, it has provoked a lot of discussion in China and on video sites like .
While James Reynolds's report (which you can watch here) was first broadcast on Sunday 6 April at 1900 BST, the items featured on YouTube were transmitted the following day - so the video is disingenuous. However, while it is true that at the time James's report was compiled no Chinese media had reported the protests, between the item being recorded and the report being broadcast, we now understand that some Chinese media did report the protests - although not the main channel, CCTV1, featured in James's report. It was wrong of us to suggest that the Chinese authorities tried to keep news of the protests off the air. When we make a mistake, we need to apologise. I'm happy to do so.
Jon Williams is the أغر؟´«أ½'s world news editor
- Jeremy Hillman
- 16 Apr 08, 08:30 AM
We do a lot of blogging these days in the Business and Economics unit. Peston's Picks, Evanomics, now replaced by our new Economics Editor Stephanie Flanders (we'll need a catchy name for her new blog if you have any ideas please…) But our technology correspondent and multi-media blogger Rory Cellan-Jones has reminded us that the act of blogging wasn't, and still isn’t, entirely uncontroversial even here at the أغر؟´«أ½. This is his blog on blogging...
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By Rory Cellan-Jones
"Should the أغر؟´«أ½ encourage its correspondents to blog? What should its attitude be to controversial posts on staff's personal blogs? And does too much blogging give you a heart attack? Three questions I've been pondering lately.
The first comes as a result of reading a piece of academic research written by a former colleague, , who has now gone to a better place as a journalism professor at the . Alf's paper is called (pdf link). It documents an extraordinary change of heart by أغر؟´«أ½ managers about the idea of blogging, from suspicion and scorn - in 2003 one website editor argued "They are an interesting phenomenon, but I don't think they will be as talked about in a year's time†- to enthusiastic embrace.
It strikes me the initial concerns were twofold - that nobody would be interested in our blogs so they would be a waste of a correspondent's effort, and that they would threaten our impartiality. But the blogs have attracted plenty of readers - Robert Peston's Peston's Picks gets a million page views a month - and they've done that without descending to the opinionated, loudmouthed knockabout which was previously seen as the prerequisite for success in this arena.
What blogging does allow a broadcaster to do is to cover stories that would never make it onto the airwaves, and, in my case, to engage with a different and very knowledgeable audience. Mind you, that's bound to be a minority audience and the danger is they become a distraction from the job of reaching the mass of licence-fee payers. Alf Hermida suggests that the أغر؟´«أ½ bloggers need to do even more to have a conversation with these people - I think there are risks in getting too involved.
And what about the blogs that some أغر؟´«أ½ staff write in their own time but where they identify their employer? At a recent internal seminar on this subject, I was taken aback at how wide the gap was between the different views on controversial posts on personal blogs. One group that I would characterise as the digital libertarians felt that just about anything was permissible in the interests of openness - including one blog post that informed readers of an easy way to hack the iPlayer. Another more conservative group – mainly like me from a news background – was aghast at this willingness to flout every أغر؟´«أ½ code, from impartiality to commercial confidentiality.
And as for those health risks, a recent has reverberated around the blogosphere after it chronicled the sad plight of a number of technology bloggers who have become addicted to posting at all hours of night and day. Three had suffered heart attacks, two of them fatal. I read this article at 0730 GMT on a Sunday morning, then noticed a new development in the Microsoft story, and fired off a quick blog post before breakfast.
So yes, blogging can be a rewarding activity, both professionally and personally. But beware of the threat it can pose to your health and to the أغر؟´«أ½â€™s reputation."
This article first appeared in the أغر؟´«أ½'s in-house magazine, Ariel.
Jeremy Hillman is editor of the business and economics unit
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