From The Editor's desktop to my in-tray

Pete Clifton, the editor of the BBC News site has started writing a column for the site called "From The Editor's Desktop", looking at "the headlines of the week, and some of the highlights and lowpoints of the coverage". There is the opportunity for users to send comments at the bottom of the page.

I've enjoyed it so far. I've written before about how difficult it can be for named BBC staff to put their head over the parapet, because you can become personally identified with all of the the ills people might perceive about the organisation.

In the edition from March 4th I like Pete's rather frank admission about the forthcoming online election coverage that it could be "a career-limiting moment" if the planned mix of "Fast, balanced news coverage, explain the issues, look at the basics, quick access to results, plenty of user comments, and maybe a bit of fun thrown in for good measure" turns out to be wrong.

The second column also featured a response to this comment from David Ward in London:

"This is daft - you're meant to be a news organisation, not a blogger. What possible public interest is there in running a weblog all about what wonderful news stories you have run this week (along with a cherry-picked bunch of comments from agreeable viewers)? This seems to be a complete waste of time and money - a poor attempt to compete with the 'blogosphere', which has been providing a genuinely independent alternative to the mainstream media."

to which Pete replied:

"Well it seemed like a good idea at the time... I thought it would be interesting to kick around a few of the things we were up to, but I could be wrong. What do you think?"

At the moment I disagree with David...but not if Pete keeps on writing things about online voting. I can't help but be alarmed by:

"I'm slightly irritated at the morning editorial meeting that our vote on 'who looked the best on Oscars night' only features women. Clint would have got my vote every time....Jamie Adams asked why it isn't possible to see the result of a vote on our site without voting. You can, though it's not exactly obvious. If you click on 'Vote!' even if you haven't voted, it will show you the result. But you'd need to be Sherlock Holmes to discover that, so we must do something about it."

"We must do something about it" might look like an idle threat to the casual punter, but to me it looks like public feature creep from the top man of one of the biggest stakeholders in one of the biggest development projects I'm currently involved in ;-)

Posted by Martin Belam, March 9, 2005    
Read the latest posts on currybetdotnet about: BBC
The views expressed on currybetdotnet are my own, and do not reflect the views of my current or former employers.

 Get free updates via RSS       Get free updates by email       Follow Martin Belam on Twitter