BBC Blogging Event and Newsnight

BBC Blogging Event
Originally uploaded by robinhamman.

We've been working q on upgrading the current BBC blogs platform for a few months now and as part of that work, Robin helped put together an internal event at work on Tuesday afternoon. Richard Sambrook and Graham have further accounts of what was a good afternoon.
One of the guest speakers; Jeff Jarvis, suggested at the beginning when being gently grilled by BBC tech correspondent; Rory Cellan Jones, that news organisations should be commissioned or assigned by their audience to go report on stories.

As it happens one of the guests at the back was Peter Barron, from Newsnight who it appears was quite taken with this idea. The Newsnight blog that afternoon...

You can tell our editor’s just returned from a blogging conference. Fresh faced and with fists clenched, he’s pushing another Newsnight experiment in audience participation. It’s quite simple – opening up the Newsnight running order to the people who watch us.

And so for the past three mornings; Newsnight's daily output editor has been sharing with users their morning email to the production team outlining the potential running order for that night's programme.

Good morning,

I'm genuinely open to any new ideas today. There are a few strong contenders for stories.

De Menezes case
The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has rejected calls for the Metropolitan Police chief, Sir Ian Blair, to resign. He said mistakes would be made in anti-terrorist operations. Mr Livingstone said yesterday's verdict - that the police had failed to protect the public in the operation which led to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005 - was a ''disaster''. He said armed officers pursuing a suspected suicide bomber couldn't afford to start thinking they might be "hauled off to court". What approach do you think we should be taking on this story today?

I don't know how long that NN will keep to this approach but Peter, in a comment to the blog post on wednesday highlights how the running order changed that night to include a story about lifestyle/cancer risk.

We won't always be able to oblige - tomorrow for example we have a long film from Mark Urban in Pakistan whether you like it or not - but there's no doubt that what you tell us will help us form our thoughts. If you'd rather leave it to us that's fine, if you're worried that what others say is unrepresentative get on here and lobby for what you'd like to see us do.

Radio 4's new iPM programme has gone even further and has been sharing the actual running order from the BBC's internal news cps for this magazine show. iPM doesn't air for another 10 days but they've been doing pilots leading up to the launch. See how it changed last week.

In the very distant past (1995) I worked on a BBC radio show where in what we grandly called its "multimedia edition"
we, get this, for 1 edition only....

Listeners can ask questions live on one Internet Relay Chat channel and read a transcript of the programme on another.

I feel very old.