As promised, here’s some of the footage from the interview Ross and I did with Tim Hubbard, the weekend editor at BBC Cornwall, about his views on public service broadcasting in the digital age.
I asked him what the most popular news stories are on BBC Cornwall’s website, and whether he thought they were necessarily the most newsworthy. This was his reponse:
As we’ve already blogged about the future of audiences, i’ll keep this post short. But it is concerning that the photo galleries are more popular than the news stories. It just makes me wonder if news has a secure future if we’re shifting towards this digital age, where it’s all available online.
There’s growing concern that what journalists consider to be newsworthy isn’t always the same stories the audience would choose to read. It’s this idea of audiences selecting the stories they are interested in and building their own news agenda.
You only have to look at the most read stories on the BBC News website to see they’re not always what we as journalists would choose as our top story.
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It’s funny, BBC have a huge issue with this at the moment – I was watching the BBC News 24 “Points of View” programme yesterday which was trying to defend their decision to put David Beckahm’s injury high in the main news agenda as opposed to the sport section…
Clearly, quite a few people had written in to express their anger about it being considered as ‘hard-hitting news’. The producer for the day defended his actions by saying it was a “slow news day”. Possibly not the best way to appease the angry public but at least he was honest!
Trying to accomodate everyone is never going to achieve anything – and in the case of Beckham, football polarises people possibly more than any other topic so I think he was never going to win. And although Tim says galleries are the most clicked on articles on the website – if the content was purely ‘fluff’ then people wouldn’t turn to the BBC in the first place. Catch 22 to suit all unfortunately…
Addressing the ‘picture gallery’ point – that doesn’t seem surprising or worrying to me. The most engaging thing about the TV news is probably the pictures, so why not online? I know I’ve been on the BBC website just to look at pictures before, having read a story in the paper and wanted more visuals on it (… it was a story about a New Year’s Day swim, I thought there might be pictures of me. There were pictures of me. Hence, possibly, part of the reason I am so whole heartedly un-worried about the BBC gallery being popular, probably my damp form in clinging thermal wear has a lot to do with it.)
I do think, though, the news shouldn’t be a democracy. While websites which try and give equal voice to all stories are noble enough, I think they’re confusing order with priority – is it really the most ‘important’ story that comes first, or the most compelling? A system, a formula, a list of what’s going on is easier to process for a viewer or reader – it’s about bracketing each story so it gets its fair share of time and attention.
I’ve re-re-read that post and realise that ‘the news shouldn’t be a democracy’ is a massive, massively loaded term. You know what I mean – what I mean is, it’s ultimately the broadcaster’s decision.
I remember when we asked Tim about what the public want and what is considered newsworthy?
The BBC website supplies a whole host of stories and pictures and video to entice people. All the stories (light fluffy animals and analysis on the Afghan troubles) are there. It’s not as if the BBC is favouring a certain area. But what is possibly troubling is that the public choose more friendly, colourful and comfortable stories/pages.
Last Friday I worked at BBC Cornwall and their online area primarily concentrates on the current affairs or as I like to call them ‘The One Show topics’. All hard news online, mainly comes from the Plymouth BBC News centre. The user friendly set up of BBC Cornwall’s website equally allow space for the news, sport and things to do. On the same page is history, picture galleries and nature folders.
But the BBC are adapting to the needs and interest of the public. Recently the BBC News site has changed the layout of its stories. Putting video and pictures up to the top of the page. It grabs immediate attention and looks more inviting compared to typed prose. It is obvious that they hope to attract more of the ‘tabloid’ audience who often buy newspapers when a picture attracts them.
That’s a really clever move. Visuals are much more appealing (in my opinion) than chunks of text. It would be interesting to see if that affects which stories are most read or the popularity of any other sections of the website.
Funny you should say that, seeing David Beckham’s injury at the top of the BBC’s news bulletin threw me completely. It’s a top story you might expect to be top story on one of our Shock FM bulletins, but the BBC? As you say though, you’re never going to please everyone and the BBC has such a broad audience.
Amy, with regard to the galleries I don’t think I explained my point properly (sorry). It’s more Tim’s point about pictures of “fluffy” being most popular that I found surprising. It’s one thing to find photos to illustrate a story you’ve read about, but the majority of these pictures are sent in by the audience and uploaded to the site. It just comes back to the BBC trying to please all of its audiences though I suppose.
As far as the most read stories go, I’m as guilty as the next person of clicking on a news story if the headlines implies it will be funny or quirky in some way. And actually, I suppose the ‘most read’ list is drawn up purely from how many people have clicked on the headline. That doesn’t actually mean they’ve read the story. It does still to some degree demonstrate which types of stories audiences would choose to read though – not always the most hard-hitting.