I know, I know I said I had closed down the blog (apart from the results of the video survey. Which are still coming by the way) but I though the blog was the best place to plant a flag for this.

Myself and long term partner in crime Paul Egglestone (@digitaldocs) had a chat with some of the good folks from the BBC College of Journalism last week about their plans for a conference around the much vexed subject of the Future of Journalism that would be based in the North West. Why the north west? Well the obvious answer is Media City but they also wanted to get the debate out of London and around the country.

That sounded like something to be involved with. After all the stuff that we have been doing with Meld and other projects this was our kind of gig.  So along with colleagues at UCLan we are working with the beeb to try and sort something else out.

The working title for the conference is Open

The idea is to run something around the back end of this year. I guess that would make it Open09 if you like.

The general consensus was that this needed to be as open an agenda as possible – hence the name. So I’ve been asking around as to the subject areas that people thought might be interesting to go at and make it as near an un-conference as dammit.

I fired a quick tweet out last week to see what people would want to to talk about and got these replies.

Can’t guarantee the ashes to ashes one would make a panel – although the future of journalism chaired by Gene Hunt would be a cracker.

Of course any conference with the BBC is going to have to give some time over to asking the BBC just what their plans are in this future of journalism. But this is also a great platform to get some good speakers and industry people to jaw with.  It could be paywalls, micropayments, new technologies; whatever takes your fancy.

So these are early stages but I’m going to keep asking- who and what would you like to see at a conference on journalism and its future in the NW?

Leave a comment or tweet at @digidickinson

Last in my (just invented) Day’o'screengrabs. Those of you using wordpress may have seen, via the dashboard, that Top Gear (the show and magazine) are using wordpress for their web presence. Cue a lot of comments from Toyota driving reps.

From the screengrab above you can see that they haven’t quite got the excerpts sorted yet but it looks good.

Just in case you think Clarkson has goen green and is recycling old posts, don’t panic. It’s just the excerpts.

Isn’t twitter great (when it’s working). Mark Comerford shared a link to a report on an EU report - no, no, keep reading, honest it’s good (and not about the Irish referendum.)

The report goes under the title of DRAFT REPORT on concentration and pluralism in the media in the European Union (PDF link) that’s (2007/2253(INI)) if you are interested.

It’s got some great stuff in there. Here are a few of the recommendations and my immediate thoughts on the thing.

Proposes the introduction of fees commensurate with the commercial value of the user generated content as well as ethical codes and terms of usage for user-generated content in commercial publications;

Suggests clarifying the status, legal or otherwise, of weblogs and encourages their voluntary labelling according to the professional and financial responsibilities and interests of their authors and publishers;

Think about the implications of that for community and professional alike. Fees for citizen journalism and full disclosure on ‘professional’ blogs.

The draft report was authored by “Estonian Socialist” Marianne Mikko. Mikko told the EU news service “the blogosphere has so far been a haven of good intentions and relatively honest dealing. However, with blogs becoming commonplace, less principled people will want to use them”.

But here is the headliner.

Asked if she considered bloggers to be “a threat”, she said “we do not see bloggers as a threat. They are in position, however, to considerably pollute cyberspace. We already have too much spam, misinformation and malicious intent in cyberspace”. She added, “I think the public is still very trusting towards blogs, it is still seen as sincere. And it should remain sincere. For that we need a quality mark, a disclosure of who is really writing and why. ”

So be careful next time you blog.

Later: Craig McGinty has a suggestion for Mikko:

if Marianne Mikko wants to see some fine examples of where people have made available information to others in an open and transparent manner drop in on some case studies of Creative Commons projects.

Ownership and diversity

The basis of the report though is not blogging and user generated content. The report identifies those as key parts of the growing richness and diversity of the media landscape. It’s that diversity (the pluralism of the title) that needs defending.

The draft notes:

whereas the primary concern of media businesses may be financial profit, media remains an ideological and political tool of considerable influence, which should not be treated solely on economic terms,

and it isn’t long before the issue of public service crops up.

The report recognises that the public service media needs a sizable and stable market share to fulfil its mission but urges it to avoid unfair competition and pursuit of the market share for its own sake. It point out that whereas in certain markets the public service media is a leading market participant, it mostly suffers from inadequate funding and political pressure.

Isn’t that just made for the current BBC Vs. regional press debate.

But whilst the report:

Recommends that the regulations governing state aid are implemented in a way allowing the public service media to fulfill its function in a dynamic environment, while avoiding unfair competition leading to impoverishment of the media landscape;

The UK newspaper industry continue to be bullish despiet the offer of an olive branch from the BBC. David Newell, director of the Newspaper Society told Journalism.co.uk

“The BBC’s 60 local websites already compete head-to-head with regional newspaper websites and its expansion plans, combined with its cross-promotional power, threaten to steal away audiences and undermine the ability of publishers to pursue their own digital development strategies, which are so important to the future of local media in the UK,”

Perhaps the EU may give the newspaper industry the leverage it needs.

Will regulation protect diversity?

Whatever the result it seems clear that the EU see regulation as the best protector of pluralism. The report…

Stresses the need to institute monitoring and implementation systems for media pluralism based on reliable and impartial indicators;

Part of me can’t help but feel uncomfortable with that. Whilst the report is pretty intellegent (if brief) it seems that the weight of regulation will be on freedom of expression where the only plurality that will be protected would be the plurality of commercial interests.

But what do you think.

Interesting stuff from Bob Eggington,  one of the founding fathers of BBC Online, in todays Guardian

BBC Online needs a new content strategy. If there is an existing content strategy, it is impossible to discern it. The current offering is a massive, rambling construction – with hundreds of separate sites of hugely varying quality. The kindest thing to say about some of them is that they are unnecessary. BBC Online should concentrate on the core stuff: news, sport, weather (though I have never entirely understood why the BBC does weather), on-demand audio and video, programme support, education and corporate information. Do these things well and forget the rest.

Of course if one of the things that they chose to focus all their big guns on is news then be prepared for more grumbling from the newspapers about there “unique position to spend on experimentation”

Robin and Alf ( thanks guys) posted on the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman “arrogance or a joke that misfired?” about submitting videos to the Newsnight website.

You could say something about an old school attitudes misplaced confidence in the security of their medium but sometimes a joke is a joke.  that misfired is probably a better explanation.

I guess we will see what Peter Barron’s view of Paxman’s joke is when he is packed off for that hard hitting interview with Posh spice; and lets the audience vote on which tie he has to wear.

Video whirlwind David Dunkley Gyimah has been out and about with his camera and got a chat with the BBC’s Peter Horrocks.

Uniquely, Horrocks was also fielding video questions from a number of super bloggers, academics and journalists from around the world enveloping multimedia journalism in what’s referred to as a Vlog Butterfly.

That’s right. He spiced things up by asking a number of people to submit video questions to Peter that he could play in to the interview.

One of them was me. So if you want to see the floating head of Andy (put the shields up Mr Sulu) on video you can see it at Dave’s Vlog butterfly.

Others chipping in include

• [US] Rob Montgommery CEO Visual Editors.com
• [UK] Jemima Kiss Journalist The Guardian
• [Norway] Tord Eilert Nedrelid Institute of Journalism
• [China & Russia] Students Masters Journalism Students
• [France] John Burke Editor World Association of Newspapers
• [Germany] Wolfgang Kissel Bauhaus University
• [South Africa] Palesa Letlaka-Nkosi, SABC
• [Australia] Mike Jones International Film School, Sydney

It’s a cool idea. Really picking up on that interactive interview vibe that’s around at the moment.

Oh, and Peter has lot’s of interesting things to say.

Go and check it. and Thanks to Dave for asking me to be involved and putting up with my last minute hold ups.

BBC radio 4 look at the impact of blogging on US journalism in New kids on the blog (Wednesday 19 December 2007 11:00-11:30)

Matt Frei looks at how the digital revolution is changing the face of American media.

American journalism is changing faster than ever before and the mass audiences of the nightly network news are in decline. With the internet explosion, Americans now get their news from an increasing number of sources.

Matt Frei takes stock of what is happening by talking to figures from the established mainstream media – including ex-CBS anchor Dan Rather – as well as the new generation of web-based journalists.

I hope it’s better informed than  the trails which generally seem to think that citizen journalists and bloggers are the same thing!

Yes, it’s hoaky headline Monday!

Like Doug Fisher, I missed this piece on BBC Newsnight about Channel 5 banning the noddy. It’s a nice piece (a little like a recent episode of Screenwipe, but well put together.) But why are 5 doing it?

(cut to interview) Because they are just cheats. It’s a small step towards installing a little bit of trust back in to news, that’s why.

So what are channel 5 doing instead? Whizz bang flashes, stretches and DVE’s! So let’s replace something that only a few editors and academics really worry about – most punters don’t care – with something that really annoys them.

Thanks for the reminder Doug.

I listen to Radio 4 veraciously and I always tune in to their morning news programme, Today.

Recently two things have really annoyed me about the show. The first is the noise of people typing in the background as interviews take place. Are you listening or typing – you can’t do both!

The second and admittedly less grumpy reason, is John Humphrys’ increasingly oblique and monotopic questioning style.

So it was great to here Vint Cerf , Godfather of the Internet, interviewed today and respond in such a measured, informed and sensible way to and increasingly redundant set of questions from the Humphrys.

Vint has put the cat amongst the pigeons by, apparently, declaring TV dead in his speech at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. But on the Today programme, he was talking about regulation of the Internet versus freedom of speech. A topic that some may rightly question him on given his position with Google and their track record. But given that some of the points raised could have been batted around all day, I was impressed by how clear he kept his points.

My favorite ‘quote’ of the interview was a point he made about the internet being a reflection of society (one of those that could become a long debate). On regulating the internet to stop bad behavior in society, he replied (and I paraphrase): When you look in the mirror and don’t like what you see. You don’t regulate the mirror. You do something about that which is reflected in it.

Have a listen via the BBC listen again service (may not be available to some)

An (other) absolutely fantastic post by Martin Belam.

He gazes in to his crystal ball to bring us – BBC iPlayer launch: The first 14 days

With just ten days to go until the launch of the BBC’s much anticipated iPlayer software, I thought I would gaze into my crystal ball and predict what the first two weeks hold for the software…

One of my favourites is

Day #14: The Daily Express front page “Now Poles Steal Our TV” reports on how ‘hackers’ in Poland have managed to bypass the BBC’s GeoIP system and have downloaded and installed the iPlayer software on a computer in Gdansk.

Go and have a look