BBC News Interactive moves centre-stage
In the words of Pete Clifton, the BBC’s head of News Interactive: “Online now drives tv content”.
Clifton’s presentation at Social Media Influence in London this week charted the steady rise of the BBC from those tentative initial steps into online media to it’s position now as online supremo. It was way back in 1994 that the beeb took that furtive first step into online media. Today their site is the largest and most visited website in the world.
It was immediately before and after the 07/07 bombings that user generated content really came into its own. As reports leaked out of a power surge on the underground, which was the officical line of TFL for a while after, video clips from inside the train and pictures of the fated bus told the reality. Not only that, they accompanied the news reports that evening.
The Beeb’s digital department is set to move from the upper reaches of the 7th floor to down to the main news room in the Shepards Bush site which goes to show just how far digital has come.
From Nick Robinson’s Newslog to Peston’s Picks, digital reporting can afford to go beyond the parameters of coverage that the likes of a 10 O’clock show allows for.
In their efforts to go online some companies end up looking like grandad in his trainers at the disco, but the BBC seems to have managed to pull it off.
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