The BBC and their Blogs
When looking for how the BBC has changed over the last couple of decades it is terribly easy to look in the wrong place. Is it the extra digital channels? No, they are just showing the same programmes as before. Is it the BBCi service? Not really, it is more thorough than the old Cefax, but it does essentially the same job. Is it the very large BBC website? No, not really. All though the website is somewhat impressive, it still is very recognisably the Beeb, and you could go back and look at old issues of the radio times and see in it what would influence the website offering. So what is the big change?
Well, it may not be the whole website, but it is part of it – the blogs . The BBC blogs have built a fairly solid reputation, and so they should since they do feature high profile bloggers such as Mark Mardell , Mark Thompson and Nick Robinson (Oh look – I put Mardell ahead of the DG. Auspicious?)
I do not know how they sit hit wise, though I would imagine it is higher than most (and certainly higher than mine!), but going by the fact that posts can attract up to 70 comments, and that the vast number of visitors never comment, I think we can safely say they are doing well.
But what are they achieving that is different?
During an election night a few months ago, Nick Robinson was posting on his blog as he was broadcasting in the studio. It was late at night, and I think only a couple of us were awake to post comments, but it was a very strange affair. On the television Robinson was very much sticking to the critical form that he has become known for. However, on the blog, the style was more chatty and in being so revealed a subtly different interpretation of the election event, one that was less restricted to a predictable style.
Other of the BBC blogs are similar. Mardells is almost predictably chatty and wanders off the point in an almost alarming way at times. But then, so does his television reports on occasion. May be what the blog is showing here is that with Mark, unlike with Nick Robinson, you get the real thing in all circumstances.
The other main blog, and certainly the blog of greatest interest recently, is the Editors blog. This does not suffer the mutterings of a single ego, but is rather the repository of various editors and occasionally more senior members of staff. Even the DG has posted there in defence of the recent problems of trust at the BBC. This blog is a little less charming than its fellows. It often reflects the corporation line and has therefore recently been somewhat defensive in its style. Some of the posts have come in for some pretty harsh criticism from the handful of regular commenters.
But are the large collection of blogs (around 43 I think) actually achieving anything? Are they of benefit to the beeb.
One of the main powers of this kind of blog is that people can comment. And comment they do, well some of us do. And reading these comments can sometimes put a different perspective on the original post. However, on the BBC Blogs we never get the sense that the original poster has actually read any of the comments or is interested in them, either to agree or disagree. So, with the over the top coverage of the McCanns , Peter Horrocks more or less ignored what anyone had to say and just kept spending money on pointless coverage (have the BBC still got a senior journalist in Portugal?)
Outside of the Editors blog, the other blogs do give their respective writers a chance to hone their writing rather than presenting skills, and thankfully they tend to be a fairly literate lot. So unlike many of the high profile blogs on the scene, at least the BBC blogs are a joy to read (especially the itinerant Mardell), even if they do talk a load of tosh at times!
Related posts:
- Nick Robinson Twists Facts Live
- Challenging Nick
- Defending the News?
- What is this America thing anyway?
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