Online Journalism Blog: Bella Hurrell on data journalism and the BBC News Specials Team

Posted on 22 February, 2011 by Martin Stabe

"Data is only useful if it is personal – I want to find out about schools in my area, restaurants near me and so on – or when it reveals something remarkable. The duck pond debacle from MPs expenses data or the Iraq civilian death records kept by the US revealed by Wikileaks’ release of the Iraq war documents are both examples of individual stories from big tranches of data that really resonated."

BBC News:- Broadband speed mapped for BBC Look East research

Posted on 15 February, 2011 by Martin Stabe

"BBC Look East is calling for people in the East of England to find out their home broadband speed, as part of the TV programme's week-long special. ... Home broadband users can take part by plotting their speed onto an interactive map."

BBC Open Secrets: Balen Report: The case continues

Posted on 9 February, 2011 by Martin Stabe

"Today was to have seen a Supreme Court hearing - and thus possibly the final stage - in the most long-running legal dispute involving freedom of information since the law came into force. However that case will not be happening this Wednesday, following the death last month of the man who initiated it and has been fighting it for several years, a London solicitor named Steven Sugar."

Press Gazette: Supreme Court to rule on BBC release of Balen report

Posted on 5 November, 2010 by Martin Stabe

I first wrote about this for Press Gazette in 2006. Truly the story that keeps on giving: "The battle between a solicitor and the BBC over access to an internal report the corporation prepared on its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to go to the Supreme Court."

paidContent:UK: Google Hires BBC News Exec To Woo Publishers

Posted on 17 August, 2010 by Martin Stabe

"Google is hiring BBC News’ head of development and rights, Madhav Chinnappa, to its partnerships team for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, it tells paidContent:UK, 'with a specific focus on helping publishers get the most out of Google News'"

paidContent:UK: Behind BBC Trust’s Apps Decision: Paid Apps Are Screwed Anyway

Posted on 26 July, 2010 by Martin Stabe

"A market assessment commissioned by the BBC Trust to help it decide whether the BBC should release smartphone apps came to a view many will find surprising: that the paid apps goldrush will be extinguished by the mobile web in a few short years."

BBC The Editors: BBC News website redesign

Posted on 6 July, 2010 by Martin Stabe

"In the next week or so, we'll be making some improvements to the design and layout of the BBC News website. ... We are doing this after listening extensively to what our users in the US and Canada have said, and with the backing of the BBC's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, which funds our online service internationally. And we've done something which will be less obvious to you, but hugely important to the journalists working on the site. We've completely rebuilt the content production system (CPS) which we use to create content and run the site. The new version of the CPS is designed to be easier to use and - crucially when we want to get stories out to you fast - quicker too."

BBC The Editors: BBC News linking policy

Posted on 8 June, 2010 by Martin Stabe

Steve Herrmann: "we will, where practical, aim to tell you if [a] link is going to a subscription site. Our automated Newstracker module, for example, should be able to do this and already signals when registration is required. For in-line links in blog posts and news stories, it may be impractical to do this for reasons of space, layout or time."

Holdthefrontpage.co.uk: Newspaper Society calls for cap on BBC story count

Posted on 1 June, 2010 by Martin Stabe

"The Newspaper Society is calling for a strict cap on the number of stories the BBC can carry on its local websites as part of a bid to stop the corporation competing with the local press."

Roy Greenslade: Witherow versus Rusbridger over paywalls

Posted on 19 May, 2010 by Martin Stabe

"If 100,000 people agreed to pay £2 a week for access to the [Times] papers, it would result in annual revenue of £10m. It's a sobering thought that the sum is but a tenth of the papers' editorial budget and less than an eighth of their current joint annual losses."

BBC: The Editors: A new record

Posted on 8 May, 2010 by Martin Stabe

Steve Herrmann: The BBC News website "had 11.4m individual users to the News website on Friday - approximately - so that breaks our previous record of 9.2m ... Over 100m page views in total ... About 6.5m page views to the election live page."

BBC: The Editors: Current traffic to BBC News website

Posted on 7 May, 2010 by Martin Stabe

Steve Herrmann: "As the story of the election continues to unfold, we're seeing unprecedented levels of traffic to the BBC News website - it's looking like more than five million users since midnight according to the data we have so far, and thousands of searches every minute on our constituency result pages."

E-Media Tidbits: TweetDeck Newsroom Rollout Continues at Sky News

Posted on 23 March, 2010 by Martin Stabe

"[Julian] March is so serious about [Tweetdeck's] value that he is making social media literacy an objective on his digital media staff's performance reviews. 'I want to see social media become a part of the fabric of the day-to-day work,' he said."

BBC News: The top 100 sites on the internet

Posted on 12 March, 2010 by Martin Stabe

"Explore this interactive graphic to find out which are the biggest sites on the internet, as measured by the Nielsen company. This feature is part of SuperPower, a season of programmes exploring the power of the internet."

Martin Stabe

A UK-centric look at new media and online journalism

Category Archives: BBC