British TV journalism Industry at its cutting edge - revelations from inside

... And news is the most dramatic drama, because it's real.

It doesn't quite resonate on the page,  but in a venue filled with the cream of British television journalism,  400 of them there's a a certain bite. 

A statement of intent about why TV's heroine keeps its practitioners going like Duracell batteries, and its audiences, the firm wish is, wanting more.

They applauded. Then again, preaching to the converted hardly shakes the china. But the speaker might be onto something. Fade to black and pull out Dziga Vertov, Russia's uber bad boy circa 1930 and yes journalism was drama par excellence.

In fact, journalism was the height of Cinema.

Somehow we've lost that search for drama on the way. Today things need shaking up -- a bit.  

I made this some years ago, which kind of works towards creating new ideas within news




Tales from the Awards

But shaking up things a bit on a grander scale is something the US stalwart network, NBC, dared to do, yet was so damn refreshing.

Months back now, it hired a British female dynamo in the shape of Deborah Turness. Turness, the architect of the news is drama speech, IS cutting edge.

Yesterday, she was given The Judges' Award,  by her peers for outstanding achievement in journalism.

Not bad at all she could say for the once 21 year old, rejected by the BBC, who then wrangled herself into ITN via its Paris Bureau many years ago.

If you haven't heard it said yet, but oh yes the Brits have come.

There in America, Turness is making her mark. Among her evaluations about news, Turness let on what pressure meant, that is to be hit by a hose - supposedly from managing the US network.

She said she  presses, among other things for the correspondents to find the "Queen on the loo" stories. *^%?? ... the unreachable.

Awards, and it is the season for them, have a habit of being like Christmas staff parties; everyone who is there is in the know; they're aware of each other, and nothing really emerges that might be a tad controversial.

Michael Crick, a reporter whom it's said strikes fear into politicians when the secretary announces: "Michael Crick is in reception", defied the general patter that award ceremonies were for glad handing each other, or increasing a reporter's brand worth.

"Thank you Channel 4" he said, for hiring me from the BBC and proving "there is life after death", Ouch! Crick 1, the BBC 0.

And there's more, but way informative. So imagine for the minute you were an outsider and  had the opportunity to attend the BAFTAs, OSCARS or in this case the RTS. The Royal Television Society Awards whose patrons is HRH the Prince of Wales.

Imagine that! The dusted black tie, the rethinking how do I get this infernal thing into a knot?  And then the journey, where the night could go either way. Particularly, if the smattering of people you think you might know are't there.

I did, you see, I used to work in television, but I have been out of front line reporting on television, though still doing net stuff. So I'm an outsider of sorts looking in. And the distance gives me a different perspective.

Firstly, a bit of mischief, so as you see I took the time to create a compendium of selfies.

Selfy 1. Jon Snow.  Getting down with the programme. Is he being ironic? I used to produce him.

Sian Williams was my cheekiest catch, but I'd bumped into her convening an event at the BBC five months ago, so I sort of mouthed "Westminster". Oh go on then! Selfy 2.

Selfie 3. I caught the BBC's wunder man Ian Pannel whose reports from Syria are seat-of-the-pants stuff.

Pannel and I share a sliding door moment. We both started our careers at Leicester twenty five years ago. I went though the door too early. He stayed. A different future unfolded.

We spoke about Syria and how the presence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria militia is preventing foreign reporters from going into Syria to report.

Marwan, I thought would have something to say on this.





The event was   a chance to to find out who had won the category that I chaired, Innovation in Journalism. Followers of this blog and my work might know I am bit bonkers about tech and news.

The three course meal
p.s taking photos of meals is now an infringement of a chef's IP in some restaurants in the UK. 

Wild Mushroom and Leek Tart

Main course: Square Cut Seabass with Parsley and Lemon. Baby New Potatoes and Baby Leeks

Cherry and Almond Tart with Vanilla Ice Cream

After Dinner thoughts

So, I have found out if I look closely enough at the winners in this category over the years, it's possible to read trends. After all, it's the best of the best who gather and then get judged, so it's more thank likely, the popular choice might have some bearing on the sociology of journalism.

One of the notable winners some years back was Al Jazeera's The Stream. A show made by young people with all the tools that put mainstream media to shame, but are now are commonplace. The year after, with more money, they changed the programme beyond recognition.

This year's finalists were Channel 4's data baby. The Channel invented a fictional character, gave her a phone and then let her mine data to show how easy it was to gain access to your phone.

YouTube's Truth Loader is a way for the video engine to offer validation for its stories.

And then the third nominee. Well, look at this below 



 Hans Rosling, a charismatic statistician, seems to have raised the bar with his interactive graphics presentations. Watch out for a presentation by your beloved broadcaster near you soon.

But something else also struck me. When Bowen was giving his acceptance speech for Specialist Journalist of the Year, for a piece of reportage in particular.

Bowen had been injured by gun pellets, but kept on reporting. That was professional enough. But Bowen did some thing that only Bowen knows.

That in the heat of the story unfolding, Bowen could offer first hand eye witness reportage, with contextual assessment and an analysis.

Think about it!

According to Bowen, when he first landed this gig some twenty years ago he says he had to plead with his bosses to allow him to do this.

Why this is significant is the feature of my PhD thesis, which questions how we can change roles in journalism and be discursive, but still operate in the parameters of news.

And I seem to have hit journalism gold. Deborah Turness, who I interviewed for an hour before she left for NBC hints at many innovative ideas worth sharing soon.

David Dunkley Gyimah was a chair of  the jury panel for the RTS Awards for Innovative News. He is a senior lecturer and videojournalist/ filmmaker. He is completing his PhD which examines a future of news. It involved speaking to more than a hundred pros from around the world, including Deborah Turness. David will be speaking at the IJF in Perugia 

RTS winner Al Jazzera's The Stream raises the game on social innovative programming

 Derrick @ashong presents The Stream

 

James Wright, the the executive producer of the RTS Award winning The Stream looked mildly shocked. He said as much on the podium receiving the award. 

At that moment and hereon, a programme made by social media networkers to address politics, social and matters important to its viewers could proclaim to be making an impact.

RTS Awards night, London

For the programme's litany of viewers that's a moot point; they require no validation, however there's always room to celebrate when your peers take note.

I was one of the jurors in the Innovation category, in which The Stream was being nominated in January. It would still perhaps be intemperate of me to reveal what goes on behind the scene, but there was no denying win or not, the programme was and is onto something.

The Arab springs and youth uprisings might have been responsible for generating some of the most captivating news items in the last years, and in eras gone by such as "1968". But in interpreting those events, there can often be a disconnect with audiences.

Invariably, it's the "grey suit" commentators interpreting events on behalf of the viewer. Intrinsically there's nothing wrong in that, but the audience codifies presentations far differently when being addressed by their age group.

Janet Street Porter knew this when she launched the BBC's radical youth show, BBC Reportage (see report) , which I worked on in 1991.

That training was instrumental in launching a programme in 1997 called The United States of Africa made by African videojournalists. Co-produced by Ghana and South Africa, it's reach was based on the make up of its constituent producers: young, indigenous, who could interpret issues their way.

Al Jazeera's Mark
It was a good day for Al Jazeera overall at the RTS Awards and a brief exchange with James illustrates they have plans for the show in the future.

Could they win it again next year? Awards mean validation, help increased branding, bring in more sponsorship, and the brand's message spreads even further.

Why not? But they've just blazed a trail, which is about to become highly competitive as other networks and new players skilled in social network broadcasting get into the field.

The Doctorate study I am completing at University College Dublin includes investigating innovation and audiences, hence my evoking BBC Reportage.

Stronger brand awareness across other media, myth as a way of reminding others you are an exemplar and innovation will be key. There's also a good deal of timing, what semioticians refer to as period and style relativism.

Sky News, a couple of years ago, launched The WhiteHouse - a house in Miami which was turned into a social media broadcast experiment; Politics and live music combined.

I judged that as well. It was a slick enterprise and for a generation had the zeitgeist about it; it also appeared to mimic Channel 4's the Big Breakfast from the 1980s. Different times often call on different productions.  EH Gombrich, the art historian would label it: Schema plus variation. Change it or examine those who have been successful by changing something.

The Stream, a 4-day interactive current affairs presented by Harvard grad Derrick @ashong, might have to hold its nerve. It's most likely as I speak being deconstructed and reworked by others to find the new alternative.

David Dunkley Gyimah was a juror for the RTS. He's worked at Newsnight, ABC and Channel 4 News and is behind the international award winning site viewmagazine.tv which features his work in China, Lebanon, Egypt, USA, South Africa, Ghana et al

Twitterbuzz Data Visualisation takes top UK Award

CNN's Twitter Buzz

A first for social network apps, yesterday at one of the UK TV calender's most illustrious events, twitter beat the best of TV News.

Well not exactly twitter, but its engine combined with the programming might of CNN's 2010 world cup presentation.

Tis the season of awards and sandwiched on a table between Channel 4's Dep Ed Martin Fewell and Mark Stephen's (Julian Assange's laywer) I mulled over whether one of my strong selections two months earlier would materialise.

That is did was satisfying given the strong field.

The category, News Innovation, featured the best UK broadcasters ( BBC, Sky, Reuters, ITN etc.), so CNN working Twitter to take primacy truly was something.

As a juror for this year's Royal Television Society Awards ( RTS) and for the past three years, the playing field for innovation certainly has changed.

From Newsnight's 10 Days to War ( I interviewed its creator, Peter Barron, now a senior executive at Google) to today's concept from CNN, this was simple but ingenious.

Using a spatial matrix similar to Maramushi, here filters plumbed to twitter feeds would influence the size of the visual data. The more popular a subject e.g. England's disallowed goal, the bigger the matrix.

Twitterbuzz as CNN calls it married the echo effect of Social Networks back into the news chamber, allowing presenters to talk about the relevant subject on a live show.

This is what I wrote about it when I combed through the judges pack in December 2010.

Twitterbuzz

"For me this use of a tool currently part of the digital media zeitgeist has found a worthy home in the broadcast world. The manner in which it was used exhibiting a global conversation in real time has huge added value. Reminds me of Maramushi – a site that tracked google and presented the news spatially.

Ben Wyatt talking about the archive option providing historicism of the debate and the calendar option was a good touch.  This has statistical analysis for broadcasters in understanding their users via looking at trending, archive and following up with targeted programmes. A simple app expanded past its baseline use. Next to be used in Politics and culture?" 

CNN didn't exactly have it their own way. In contention was the BBC's Live Page which combined expert analysis, comments, video and user feedback during the Chilean Miners' rescue and ITN's Instant Polling which you would have seen during last year's UK election, with their live tracker giving instant feedback to viewers' reactions to the leadership contest.

Away from the awards, more recently a piquant use of Twitter mashup, which is playing a role in today's Irish election, though how much is questionable, is this popularity gauge in the Journal.

The work of Professor Barry Smyth and team from UCD, twitters imbrication with main stream media appears to have found a cosy bed.

end

David Dunkley Gyimah is a Knight Batten Innovation in News winner. He is a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster and PhD candidate at the SMARTlab at UCD. He's been an RTS juror for the last three years. His videojournalism work with a new generation of Egyptian journalists from its state TV over the last three years can be seen on viewmagazine.tv

Judging the UK's best TV media in Innovation

RTS meeting, 5th floor

When the email came, it was a polite, short, and to the point.

That was 3 months ago.

Today we gathered. Nine of us off Black friars, near Fleet street - the home once upon a time of the might of British newspaper journalism.

Our task might have been simple enough, but there was nothing simplistic about it: to judge this year's UK winners of the Royal Television Society Awards in News Innovation.

It is a highly sought after award, the equivalent in the US would be the EMMYS and it strap line is often emblazoned across the face of its victors. This year's entrants, as always, were stellar.

There's much I would like to discuss here, but I won't because it violates the openness in which juror members spoke.

There is substance in this that could lead to further debates for academic purposes, so I have an idea. But for this session a reworked edict of one of my haunts rules, Chatham House rules.

All I'll say is the submissions mixed online, with offline, video journalism and personalised video, drama and journalism, and ambition with ingenuity providing the seeds of where TV could, might go next.

After the awards event itself in February, I may post more expansively where there will be appropriate context.

RTS jurors for News Innovation 2009

What is Innovation
Innovation is a fascinating area of enquiry. What defines it? What values are inherent within it? And is it an acquirable commodity?

The media whirlwind we see ourselves surrounded by at present is being whipped up by innovation and creativity, and there will, I hedge, be much store placed on this as we move into a new cycle of offline and online expansion in these trying times.

Bill Thompson, a technology pioneer for which much has been written about was one of the jurors and this supposition is an area I will return to with Bill in mind.

Incidentally, and I hope he's not embarrassed but here's Bill in 1996 from a broadcast about the future of British newspapers made by a Videojournalist colleague of mine. [link soon]

There is a note which affects my own assessment of innovation, and I'm referring here more to my job as a senior lecturer.

It is that no matter what I see, however small or grandiose something is in its bid to be innovatory, there is much that can be discovered about process and fortitude.

Those qualities alone may not win for innovation but I'm intrigued about that process all the same, the ethnographic quality.

So in debates I have learned not to be so dismissive. That said by the end of the day there has to be a winner and alas genius can often be a scant commodity.


Searching for Innovation
On a general note as well, what we consider innovatory, may well be, and sometimes be far off the mark.

Innovation searches for great leaders, whom inspire others, and the more diverse the debate about the journey, the more creative, I believe can be the outcome.

Watching Danny Boyle, an awesome figure, talk about Slumdog Millionaire which swept the board at the Golden Globes, is a typical example.

After screening to an Asian audience, he was asked on the BBC's Culture Show how he managed to get the richness of the city on screen in a way that suggested he must have lived there.

I was lucky, Boyle said, but then he spoke about someone, I'm presuming a fixer, he had kept on and would advise him and his team where they could be going wrong making clunky mistakes.

You can see this 7.29 minutes in on the Culture Show on the BBC's I- player. But quick because after a week this link is deprecated.

Innovation is a mixed mind pursuit. At the start of the web 2.o "S" curve, it was an Achilles for TV. But much, much, has changed since. Though "mixing it up" still holds water.

This article from Edward Roussel, digital editor of the Telegraph Media Group, for the Nieman Harvard Reports site is a compass for navigating the new journalism, and being innovative.

So back to the RTS. It is an award for innovation, which did have me asking introspectively. Why me as a juror?

I might have wishfully hoped the fact that I had a broadcast past, had worked across several broadcasters -all with different house styles - had an insight into the world of newspapers and would yap like a terrier without drawing breath if I was brought onto the subject of innovation and new media.

No, I'm certain, but I didn't ask. But mixing non broadcasters and broadcasters in a room together does yield interesting areas of discourse, so there it is perhaps: that mixture of academia and media.

But I was here all the same and am looking forward to the event itself, where I hope [with permission] I can put together a VJ feature package around this most fascinating of subjects.

End+

David Dunkley Gyimah is also a 2009 juror member for the International Video Journalism Awards in Berlin and will be in Miami for the Gamechanger awards, where his work was cited.