Senior Ed

Ed Campbell, ITVs Senior News Editor, is joining the BBC news team, alongside his Oxford University contemporary Lucy Manning. He'll be called Editor, Special Correspondents.

I suddenly have lots of new twitter followers for some reason...
— Ed Campbell (@edcampbell71) June 17, 2014

..and more viewers for his work, on screen, behind the scenes and on social media.

Indescribably boring report on #newsnight on #fracking. How I wish they'd go back to the good old days of libelling Former cabinet ministers
— Ed Campbell (@edcampbell71) June 27, 2013

White Heat appears to be totally up it's own arse, typically smug BBC shite. How disappointing.
— Ed Campbell (@edcampbell71) March 8, 2012

Way ahead

As usual, there are rich pickings in the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism annual report on digital news.

Here's an interesting chart, which groups new sources and their usage into "online" and "offline", rather than breaking them down by tv, radio, newspapers, websites, social media etc. The analysis is done for a range of countries, but the BBC's UK lead is stark and remarkable. (Click to go large).

It's the content...

Telegraph Editor-In-Chief Jason Seiken's weekly missives of "encouragement" still leave news stories at the bottom of the list.

In his latest, he runs through global and UK online stats, video views, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Chartbeat and Telegraph Tours (in the company of Telegraph writers), before arriving at the rather limp "The newspaper continues to shine", with no stats whatsoever.

Comber

Head of the Leader's Broadcasting has a grand ring as a title, but applicants for this new role working for Ed Miliband can expect a salary of just £44,244.40 plus a fixed allowance of £971.

And the tasks are pretty specific.

• Overseeing the broadcast output and visual images of the Leader of the Opposition.
• Advising Leader of the Opposition on broadcast performance and helping him prepare for clips/interviews/visits.
• Overseeing the broadcast grid ensuring all conferences, visits and events by the Leader of the Official Opposition receive effective broadcast coverage.
• Developing and sustaining relationships with senior broadcasters.
• Setting up broadcast interviews and photo opportunities for the national media
• Developing fresh ideas for making the best of Leader of Opposition's brand strengths and communicating his message in broadcast medium.
• To carry out any other reasonable tasks as directed by the Executive Director of Communications.

The post holder will be expected to contribute to projects outside the scope of this description when required to do so by the Executive Director of Communications and the Leader’s Chief of Staff.

Should, perchance, anyone working for BBC News in London be interested, the salary lies at the top of journalist entry grade band 7, and about the middle of the next "Senior Broadcast Journalist" level, Band 8/9.

Inky

Fans of the Simpson Scrolls, one of the key BBC journalistic digital production tools, will be pleased to note that they make another appearance in this week's edition of The Editors. And close-ups reveal that there's a gold edge to each sheet.

test tube

James Harding's lab experiment at BBC News - attempting to apply newspaper editorial systems to a broadcasting cephalopod - is exposed to scrutiny again today, with the advert for another new role he has created, News Editor.

It's a senior management role, reporting directly to Big Jim and his Number 2, Fran Unsworth. But the job spec is a defensive piece of work, with a number of inherent contradictions. .

The post will have an overview of the agendas being pursued by the Newsroom, Newsgathering, Millbank, Programmes and English Regions, (and if appropriate the language services) and will bring together teams as needed to drive forward big stories to ensure that the whole news operation is bigger than the sum of its parts. 

The role will not seek to draw up running orders or interfere in the decisions of individual editors, who will still be accountable for their own programmes. It is not intended that this role will result in a more homogenised agenda, as plurality is vital to purposes of BBC News and CA. But the News Editor will have the authority to demand appropriate staffing and resources on important running stories by relevant parts of News Group. Negotiation will be key to how it operates. 

Equally this role will have the authority to state that some requests will not be met and some stories may not be covered as a result of effort being placed elsewhere.

So editors can run whatever stories they like, but, if there's no coverage, that's in script and interviews with outsiders only...  And presumably, if this sensitive News Editor loses a negotiation, he tells the bosses. A period of high anxiety will follow for all other editors.

Impact

Odds and ends: The David Dimbleby documentary on Mandela last night on BBC1 - much of it recut from a two-parter made in 2003 - attracted 1 in 10 of the available audience. David will be flying to Johannesburg next week, to present Question Time from there. One presumes he's bagged the funeral commentary.

Clearly many BBC journalists interviewed Mr Mandela over the years. The BBC's World Editor John Simpson, opened his contribution to last night's six o'clock bulletin on Radio 4 with the point-scoring "The first time I met Nelson Mandela...."  Fans of the great man can watch him talking about his faith on BBC1 this Sunday morning at 10.00am. John Simpson, that is. Seems to have been recorded in Dublin. Which may have helped with John's October piece for HighLife.

Tears at BBC Review Show recording last night as all three critics paid emotional tribute to the riveting, inspiring new Mandela movie
— James Delingpole (@JamesDelingpole) December 7, 2013

Here's some Mandela bits to catch up with from BBC local radio. It's not just for weather.

Shipping news

As new BBC News boss James Harding assembles his top team, the staff are anticipating some more structured thought from him, at least before Christmas...if only the all-points email saying "if you're having time off, please enjoy it".

His next planned public appearance is the inaugural W T Stead Lecture, on January 13th at the British Library (prop ex-BBC exec Roly Keating - the man who gave back). Slightly alarmingly, the lecture series is in memory of pioneering hack William Thomas Stead - perhaps the most famous English passenger to die on the Titanic. William edited The Northern Echo at the age of 22, then moved to London and the Pall Mall Gazette, a pre-cursor of The Evening Standard. There he ran campaigns against slums, child prostitution and for a stronger navy.

Bloke news

James Harding, seen as a champion of the female gender at The Times, has selected two men in their fifties to strengthen the team running BBC News. Keith Blackmore, Harding's number 2 at Wapping, comes in to the new post of Managing Editor. Keith rose from the sports pages - and his farewell video (he resigned in August) featured tributes from Jose Mourinho and Frank Lampard.

As we predicted, Jonathan Munro comes from ITN to run Newsgathering.  ITN have already filled behind, but, according to the The Guardian, they could be risking tremors and death with their new appointment...

ITV News moved quickly to replace Munro by appointing Tim Singleton, former assistant editor, newsgathering, as its new director of newsgathering. In the last eight years he has been responsible for bringing in three Baftas in a row, for earthquakes in China and Haiti and the Cumbria murders.

Island life

The disputatious duo of Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay have had a reasonably firm rebuff from the BBC Trust, after lodging 17 complaints about a Today feature on Sark from March last year. The piece, by Guernsey-born Sarah Montague, looked at tensions between the brothers' various enterprises on the island and elected officials - still rumbling on to this day. The brothers' charges were presented by barrister Gordon Dawes, of Guernsey's Mourant Ozannes, Offshore Law Firm of The Year, Chambers Europe Awards 2009, 2011, 2013.

Only one element of the brothers' case was upheld; a local resident lost business from their various companies on the island later than the report had indicated, and that, apparently, should have been checked.

I wonder if the BBC might consider putting the cost of this sort of exercise at the end of each case.

Keep the faith

Paul Mason, Newsnight's economics editor, has now left the building - with a fine farewell documentary on Northern Soul, complete with some dodgy dancing, 24 first-rate tracks, and unposed questions about Paul's possible use of diet pills.

He's also filmed a valedictory interview for the BBC's journalists to mull over - this is an edited transcript of his final thoughts on how things have changed during his twelve years with Auntie.

A more diverse set of people now get to be editorial leaders. But the organisation can still feel like it is set up to be led by a kind of patrician elite. There can be a jarring sometimes between newer, younger editorial management and the way the organisation responds to commands and requests. The danger sometimes is that the signals that come from the top are “don’t mess up,” (sometimes put a bit more forcefully), whereas the signals should be from the outside world, saying “you’re not ordinary enough, you’re not believable enough, you’re not innovating enough.”

If I said one thing on leaving this building, it would be: become more receptive to those signals.

Ron and Nick

The virtual letter pages of BBC house organ Ariel are turning into a place for debate worthy of our grander newspapers. The latest topic is the former Deputy Director General and Director of Journalism, Mark Byford and his redundancy deal.

On the left, Nick Serpell, BBC Obituaries Editor and former Father of the Chapel for News. On the right, former BBC Executive Ron Neil (brought back by Mark to lead the post-Hutton review aimed at "putting things right" in News).

Ron started it, with a letter defending Mark's character...

Mark did not negotiate this deal; it's what he was informed he would receive. Nevertheless, many staff have been highly critical of the pay-offs issue and the large sums of money involved. That is perfectly understandable. 

What is less understandable, and hugely unfair, is the suggestion in some of the press that Mark was nothing other than a self serving, time serving BBC mandarin. Since balance is so important to the BBC, let me say, as his old boss, that Mark Byford was an inspirational leader of the BBC's journalism who worked tirelessly to bring cohesion, wise management and good judgement to the running of this huge division and, in so doing, the journalism was never stronger.

The rejoinder from Nick is pointed.

I never met Mark Byford but I do not doubt that everything Ron Neil wrote about him was completely true. 

It is impossible to imagine that lowly members of staff would ever be offered a redundancy deal way over their contractual terms to persuade them to 'stay focused'. If that ever did happen, I would hope that their own honesty and integrity would persuade them to decline the offer.

Cultural shift

The teams that produce Newsnight on BBC2 and Today on Radio 4 have historically circled each other warily, each confident in the belief that their own journalism, contacts, scoops and big interviews are better than the other's.

Ian Katz at Newsnight is in that period of the BBC financial year just before the bean counters get anxious, so this week jetted out Paxo to the Middle East, to present and report. Jamie Angus, fresh from minding Newsnight in the post-Savile interregnum, is now at the helm of Today, and this week spent on sending James Naughtie to offer some apercus from Washington. (Is this perhaps a last jolly before Jim has to turn up for shifts at Good Morning Scotland ?)

The BBC is notoriously quiet about Newsnight's viewing figures. At the RTS Cambridge conference, Richard Desmond, owner of Channel 5, who ought to have reasonable access to data, said the average audience stands at 613,000. Katz is under more pressure than Angus when it comes to cost per listener/viewer....

Anchors a-weigh

The current issue of TV Guide in the States offers its annual estimate of top earners on screen, based on "conversations" with agents, network execs etc.

In news, Matt Lauer, at NBC Today, is thought to lead the field, on $22-25million. Here's some of the rest..

Bill O'Reilly, Fox News $17 million
Diane Sawyer, ABC World News $12 million
Anderson Cooper, CNN $10 million
Rachel Maddow, MSNBC $7 million
Megyn Kelly, Fox News Channel $6 million
Scott Pelley, CBS Evening News $5 million
Ann Curry, NBC $5 million
Hoda Kotb,NBC Today $3 million
Chris Cuomo, CNN $2.5 million

I feel sure the absence of Piers Morgan from this list is an oversight. Though when he first signed with CNN, the four-year contract was said to be worth $5.5m - and Piers was still on America's Got Talent.

In the total absence of conversations with agents, network execs, etc, I offer this tentative ranking of the UK's top earners in "news" presentation.

David Dimbleby
Jeremy Paxman
John Humphrys
Fiona Bruce
Huw Edwards
Evan Davis
Jon Snow
Mark Austin
George Alagiah
Sophie Raworth
Mishal Husain

I look forward to being corrected by those of you slaving away in newsrooms on one of the nicest Bank Holidays in years...

Dominick Harrod

The BBC's former economics editor Dominick Harrod has died after a fall, aged 71. There are myriad tales to tell of him, but as a wise former correspondent has said elsewhere, these must "await the reading of the obsequies". I can't find any of his BBC work via the web, but here's a bit of him talking to C-Span about the London Economic Summit of 1991 - starts 1m 33sec in.

Tootling

The Commons Public Accounts Committee may like to note that former BBC DG Mark Thompson will be back in blighty on Friday 6th September, giving a lecture (titter not) entitled "Paying the piper".

Mark returns to Oxford for the Reuters Memorial Lecture 2013 - the subtitle is "Re-thinking the economics of newspaper journalism". The next morning he's part of a plenary panel on "The future of journalism", alongside Peter Barron (ex BBC Newsnight, now Google), Nic Newman (ex BBC News Online), John Stackhouse of Canada's Globe and Mail, and Natalie Nougayrede of Le Monde. The session is chaired by David Levy, (ex BBC radio producer and Newsnight reporter, BBC Controller of Public Affairs up to 2007).

Control

Whilst my sense of fair play may not be innate, I feel I should tell you that Jeff Zucker's revamp of CNN is changing the recent hierarchy of news channels in the USA. In the last quarter, CNN pulled ahead of MSNBC in prime time, to take second place, though still some way behind Fox News.

The new breakfast programme has had a good start; the arrival of Jake Tapper at 4pm creates a stronger platform for the evening output; amd whilst Piers Morgan still "hammocks" between Anderson Cooper's shows, he's pulling ahead of Rachel Maddow on MSNBC much more often.

On a vaguely-related matter, I look forward to a debate between Piers, campaigner for gun control, and Stuart Prebble, who last week reported on "breadth of opinions" in the BBC's news and current affairs output. I copy the relevant Prebble passage without comment.

The example with which I have regularly irritated journalists and producers within the BBC during this review involves the issue of gun control in the United States. I believe that many people listening to or watching the BBC in recent months would infer from its coverage that the BBC is in favour of gun control in America. This does not mean that opponents of gun control are not given airtime on the BBC but that, when they are, it seems to me that they are likely to be challenged in a manner which is different from the way that proponents are treated. This happens, I suggest, because of what we could call “an assumed consensus” within which we make editorial judgements – as evidenced by the Today programme presenter who declared in an interview on 23 February that “the British people are bemused by the anti-gun control argument in the US”. All our instincts tell us that having fewer guns in circulation must be a good thing, and so (to a greater or lesser extent) the BBC treats as eccentrics anyone who takes a different view.
But let us see if we can look at the situation in another way. Tens of millions of people in the United States oppose gun control, and they cannot all be crazy. Opponents of gun control are not people who are in favour of shooting children in schools with automatic rifles – they are people who are every bit as against it as are the rest of us – they simply have a different answer to the question of how to make such shootings less likely. They believe that if you introduce gun control into a nation where there are already tens of millions of legal and illegal guns in circulation, then the law-abiding citizens will give up their guns, and the criminals will keep theirs; not a situation guaranteed to make our children safer. 

Seeing this argument from all sides involves the very simplest exercise in empathy. It goes without saying that if the US were starting from a position similar to the position in the UK, where relatively few guns are in circulation, then every effort should be made to restrict their further circulation. But that is not the situation in the US; that horse has bolted, and they are dealing with an entirely different position. If between us we are unable to stretch our powers of empathy even to the extent of imagining a different starting point, then what hope do we have of understanding and empathising with the views of people we disagree with from the Middle East or North Korea?

Aversion therapy

It must be very galling for someone quite new to tv reporting to see the guts of their scoop go to others, and then end up with a poor audience for their big debut.

Daniel Foggo, ex Mail, Telegraph and Sunday Times, presented the Panorama that teased MPs and Lords with pretend money from Fiji. The pre-emptive Tory party resignation of Patrick Mercer meant that the "money shot" (stop sniggering) of Daniel's Panorama special had to be pulled out and used by BBC political correspondents to explain the story on Friday 31 May. By the time we got to full transmission on Thursday 5 June, Panorama returned overnight ratings of just 1.3m viewers. It was even beaten by The Most Dangerous Man In Tudor England, on BBC2, with 1.6m.

Panorama also gave credit to the Telegraph's investigations editor, Claire Newell, as "2nd Undercover reporter". The film was made by Snapper TV, the indie formed by Philip "Pip" Clothier and his partner Rosie Millard, former BBC Arts correspondent. Pip apparently wears a snoring ring.

Bedfellows

The Panorama/Telegraph sting on Patrick Mercer is unusual in a number of ways. I can't remember the BBC "going undercover" to target an MP before; and I have no recollection of any previous journalistic partnership with The Telegraph, increasingly dismissive of BBC failings under editor Tony Gallagher.

The Telegraph trio of credited reporters (so far) all have previous experience on the Sunday Times. Claire Newell is Investigations Editor; Holly Watt is Whitehall Editor, and seems to have lighted on the Fiji idea - " chosen as the subject of the lobbying investigation because it is an undeserving cause for back-bench MPs; and Daniel Foggo now bills himself as a self-employed tv journalist, after 16 years in Fleet Street.

BBC procedures for this sort of exercise are labyrinthine, and harder to navigate when money is used. The Telegraph/BBC partnership seems to have started in January, as Helen Boaden's tenure at News was coming to an end, and way before the arrival of James Harding from The Times. I presume the team had a pop at a cross-party selection of MPs, and Mercer is the only one who bought the sting in a big way.

Mr and Mrs

This Sweeney stuff is all a bit odd. It's stated his wife, Tomiko, lectures at the LSE, but the only Tomiko I can find on the London School of Economics website is Tomiko Newson (her maiden name) as a July 2012 BSc graduate in international relations and history. She clearly visited North Korea in the same way last year - and reported for From Our Own Correspondent, as well as getting several newspaper articles published - without concern about her cover.  The only other journalistic credit I can find is for a piece on binge drinking by women in the BBC Online News Magazine, from December 2006.

John and Tomiko appeared to have tied the knot in 2007, in a wedding in a remote part of Cornwall - not remote enough, apparently, as John believes there was a Scientologist hiding in the bushes taking photographs.