chrismwoods
Chris Woods
Was best washer-up in Ealing. Now gentrified with dishwasher in Amersham. Still irons.
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Meet five of the engineers who work at the UK’s biggest power station and biggest single site renewable energy generator. Want to find out more? Read their stories. https://www.drax.com/technology/
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#BattleOfBritain fly past seen from Holborn
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Almost 20 years ago, Oasis at Knebworth. Now, the gig of this decade! #music
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Social networks ranked by monthly users http://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/ #socialmedia
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Notes: Gorkana Breakfast Briefing with Kamal Ahmed, Business Editor, BBC News
This morning I attended a talk by Kamal Ahmed. Notes below. Any errors are mine.
Kamal on Twitter: @bbckamal
Event hashtag: #GorkanaBBCNews
Challenges from his first year in the role
The move into broadcasting was a huge leap
He found trying to be natural on screen almost impossible
Only been doing it a year: I’m certainly no expert [at broadcasting]
He slipped back into print mode but was asked to think about the overall richness of the package
Gets lots of feedback from the viewers. Nice in the street. On Twitter, slightly less comfortable at times. Get aggressive tweets about what you’re trying to do. Get lots of emails. You listen to it. We are there for the listener/viewer.
Digitisation of news: It’s really important. It can tell us a little bit about what viewers think. Surprised at level of engagement around the Tesco story: often the best-read stories on the BBC website.
Broadcasting best practice
As a broadcaster, he now attempts to give people the story where the words and the pictures fit together
He now uses tricks and mechanisms to capture the attention of the public: As you’ve seen from Goggle Box, people are doing a thousand other things, like seeing if their fish fingers are ready
I hope my broadcasting is slightly more relaxed after feedback.
Robert Peston says: don’t speak to the listener/viewer in jargon.
Business [print] journalists use short hand. It’s not good enough [for broadcast]. Why is Kamal speaking so slowly you may ask? Becauase he’s trying to find the words to explain liquidity, debt ratios to an audience that’s smart but not expert in business language. Members of the public might not know what ‘publicly listed supermarkets’ or ‘selling Lloyds onto the public markets’ means.
Different types of journalism
The 6 & 10 O’Clock news on BBC One are about distilling the six-to-seven most important news stories in the world, that day
It might be the only business news someone gets
General public more interested in business than we sometimes give them credit for
His column in the Sunday Telegraph (1200 words) would take four 10 O’Clock News shows to get across that amount of detail
His blog tries to explain the why of a story. It may focus on one of the stories that’s not the 6/7 biggest.
e.g. Government selling Eurostar (govermenment selling assets, are there going to be any more sales ahead of the election? I said no). That level of detail wasn’t in the story broadcast on the BBC TV news.
Working day/week
BBC News Online team start work at 5am
Kamal’s day is often from 7am through until the 10 O’Clock news
Brief catch up with Jasmin Buttar (Editor of the Business and Economic Unit) and Piers Parry-Crooke (Assignments Editor at the Business and Economics Unit) at 8.45am
Main BBC editorial meeting attended by editors, heads of units at 9am
All staff from Business and Economics Unit meet at 10am
He has to be able to help journalists and answer their questions
He has to broadcast, write his blog.
If there’s a Big story: My first, most important job is to tweet the first two lines of that story before I go on the Today programme
He then does Today prog, Breakfast omn BBC One, 9am on One, 5 Live, BBC One news at 1, 6, 10pm etc.
From about 4-6 you go into the edit suites. It’s at that point you have to focus on the 6, the 10 O’Clock News and the 6pm radio news. Which pictures, which info, have we got the balance right? Brief break. Into the edit suite for the 10. Slightly more step-back look, slightly longer, broader. Demographically slightly different viewers (10 O’Clock compared to the 6). More about what the story means and what’s going to happen next. At the 10 you’re trying to break tomorrow’s stories.
The BBC’s business and economics unit is a service unit and includes personal finance, economics, energy, retail, etc. Often Robert Peston or Kamal leading on big story. Often away filming. If a story breaks elsewhere, another correspondent covers.
Every week they have the editors meeting: 12 UK based on-air editors at the BBC meet as the lead group for their different disciplines. James Harding (Head of BBC News) chairs the meeting.
Working with businesses and PRs
Frustrating when business refuses to come out and make arguments: They’ve got to make themselves part of the conversation
[email protected] to get someone or something on the Business and Economics Unit planning calendar
High level stuff: come direct to Kamal
To work out what ‘high level stuff’ is, watch what we do; how many naughts does it have to have; does a story have resonance beyond the facts? Does it have broader appeal?
Most PRs who approach me don’t seem to understand what I do
Gets loads of tech news: not for me; send to Rory Cellan Jones (BBC’s Technology Correspondent)
Mark Broad (Business Producer who works alongside Kamal) also good to approach
Examples of stories interested in:
AstraZeneca/Pfizer deal as the story said a lot about pharma in UK as a possible foreign takeover was highly political; a rather small number of BP job losses (in 100s) but it connected to falling output in North Sea, so they covered it Banking still hugely important
Retail touches everybody
PRs are both a help and a hinderance. They obviously have a role to play and journalists have to get that. As in all walks of life there are people who aren’t good at their job and people who are very good. At the last minute before broadcast you need people [good PRs] you can call to ask about issues.
A lot of broadcasting is about planning. About knowing what’s happening before it happens.
Even seasoned PRs will ring me up at 5.45pm when a massive story is going on. About something interesting but not right timing. The more heads up you can give us, the more chances there is of getting coverage. It’s about trust. Resources. If we do something it’s expensive; money; camera trucks, leased lines, satellite feeds. You have to be able to share information in advance.
We keep to embargoes. Trust is essential. You’d lose trust in a second if you didn’t abide by that game.
We need expertise (we don’t often have ‘initial sync’) so we’re looking for people who can comment. Looking for ideas and takes on things for the blog too. E.g. on a wire story. Looking for people who can say something in 25 seconds.
Biz unit has list of people. Kamal has own list of contacts. Quite a lot of competition. Three bits of sync (three speaking) in a broadcast package. It’s a pretty high bar.
Danger of over-rehearsal, danger of having your lines too ready. Don’t use jargon. Viewer won’t follow. As soon as the viewer flickers, they’ve lost the next sentence. Looking for someone who is a friendly face. Some you’d like to speak to in the pub. Not worried or stiff.
Ross McEwan (CEO, RBS) apologised for bank’s bad behaviour. The public think if you don’t appear, you don’t care. The viewer is paying for the broadcaster.
We will treat what you say fairly.
If you are going to be interviewed, you have to be prepared to be asked about anything.
If a business person is being paid a lot of money, I find it hard when they try to refuse to be asked certain questions.
If you are running a big organisation in the UK, you should be accountable for that.
I try to read all my emails. I make a decision in three paras or points. I’ll then often forward it to another journalist.
That initial email has to be pretty limited. Often PRs don’t connect it with what we are doing. No one ever says ‘I notice you did that and therefore you might find this interesting’. PR approaches are always cold.
You don’t have to ask me if I’m well! Just tell me what’s going on and link it to something happening. We don’t live in a complete vacuum. Do email me but I get a lot of emails.
On #banks: Get to be out there and comment. You clearly need to stop ballsing up.
RBS is going to be one of the big, big stories over the next two years. Howard Davies’ appointment as chair..
Still find it difficult how #banks are almost wholly on the defensive and fail to set their own agenda.
The drama of bad news often wins out vs ‘good’ news. But you don’t want to have only bleak news. We do need breakthroughs and entrepreneurialism.
On Jeremy Clarkson
You clearly have your producer, when you’re not punching him
What’s next
BBC is launching a new five days a week TV programme: Business Live. Half-hour daily business programme
31 March -- launches on BBC World
1st June -- launches on BBC News Channel
Want interesting, live interviews with CEOs and chairmen and chairwomen
Robert Peston, Linda Yueh (Chief Business Correspondent based in Singapore) and Kamal will appear regularly
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There has been a lot of head scratching about which election hashtag to use. I thought I’d do a little research to help answer the question and explain why corporate communicators should take note.
#GE2015 is currently the most used election hashtag; it’s in the lead with almost 60,000 potential hashtag views per hour ...
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"Social media now is like kissing babies used to be as a way of politicians seeming more human," Chris Woods, head of digital at Hanover Communications, told CNBC."It's still stage managed – but the key is the difference between being too stage managed and feeling more personal."
.@chrismwoods on using social media to make politicians seem normal. An impossible task: http://t.co/UXGldAmUHd pic.twitter.com/tPwERDREfY
— Viv Jemmett (@vejemmett) February 16, 2015
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Do you agree with my article in the Guardian? Let me know.
Why #CameronMustGo campaign can't make a real difference http://t.co/derXs8gjdW
— Gdn Media Network (@GdnMediaNetwork) December 8, 2014
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Overall, he handled it very well. It was reminiscent of how he handled the Virgin Trains crash a few years ago. He got to the site as quickly as he could and he fronted the response.
Another thing he did well was to round up the advocates, i.e. people who had bought tickets for future flights, to speak for Virgin Galactic. Branson is the founder and this incident puts into question whether Virgin Galactic is too much of a stretch for the Virgin brand.
I spoke to PR Week about Sir Richard Branson’s response to the tragic Virgin Galactic accident. Read the article here: Branson praised for crisis response to fatal Virgin Galactic test crash | PR Week
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Internet trolls could face up to 2yrs in jail. But right now, what immediate action can you take? I wrote this piece for PR Week. What do you think of the options available on Twitter and Facebook?
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Hanover's Viv Jemmett considers Wikipedia's future.
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The Economist via #hyperlapse (at Amersham, Buckinghamshire)
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