About Me
Producer and media engagement encourager. Ilkley, West Yorkshire
A passion for for photography and digital communication with a background at the BBC and ITV.
Currently director at the School Media Club making cinema films for schools and working for Oblong Leeds a community development organisation. Also a member of All Saints Church in Ilkley and involved with communications in the parish.
This blog features posts about photography including some of my photos, while the media posts will include thoughts about filmmaking and online media - particularly to do with PR activities.
read moreSchool Media Club
Tag Archives: blogging
Cutting the costs of ITV regional news. Perhaps more accessible?
I’m very interested to see how the professional media world is merging with consumer level media. Calendar News, part of the ITV news network, is using online tools that are accessible to everyone.
The ITV online news channel is basically a blog populated by videos hosted not by ITV but using Vimeo. Vimeo is a free video orientated social media channel a bit like Youtube.
I’m not sure what this does for the brand image of ITV as a big player, but it may be seen as a means of making the service feel more accessible and “ordinary”. I don’t have a problem with this especially if the journalism stands out as being excellent. ITV‘s great strength in Yorkshire is its approachability in my view.
The great news is that for any aspiring journalists, you can create a news website which follows this model and uses these very tools. The next step, I imagine, is to encourage the participation of citizen journalists in ITV’s news coverage – a step we began to take when my team established ITV Local Yorkshire a few years back but proved too expensive at the time.
Another interesting aspect is that if you have a Vimeo account you can get statistics about how many people have viewed the videos and for how long – introducing a daring competitive element.
Posted in ITV, Media
Also tagged blog, calendar news, citizen journalists, itv, journalism, media, news, news website, reporting, television, Video, vimeo
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How should large media organisations handle their blogs?
Twenty years ago that headline might have been misunderstood!
Interesting article in the Guardian about the use of blogs by large companies. It challenged me to think about how badly this blog is put together.
Shouldn't be random bursts of information from here or there but be focused around a specific and simple idea. Blog readers are looking for insiders who's expertese can't be found anrywhere else. Readers want a named writer who they can trust. They are looking for an angle.
First person accounts – casual, intimate stories
Named and trusted writer
Insiders view
A concept
An angle
The thing missed out of the article is around the accessibility of the writer to respond to comments and clarify any misunderstandings. Company blogs are perhaps seen as marketing tools rather than a means of honing the grasp of the issues. Comments without clarification carry risks – so how far are companies prepared to engage with the discussion that ensues?
12 ideas for blog posts
Here are some top tips for blogging from Paul Bradshaw of online journalism blog. I read the piece and decided to take the first piece of advice which is to respond to something elsewhere on the web. The other ideas for gaining visibility are as follows:
suggest an idea
interview someone (i've not done that yet)
blog an event (yes, done that)
ask a question (?)
pick a fight (should do)
reflect on something (do too much of that)
do something visual (now you're talking)
review something (like this list)
make a list (indeed)
write a how to
let someone else post
on the how to suggestion they note that - one of the most popular types of search query is ‘How do I..?’ or ‘Why do..?
For a more in-depth explanation here's a link to online journalism blog (if indeed you agree that blogging = journalism) and he's looking for more suggestions.
