Monday, August 12, 2013

The news machine

It's moderately straightforward to decide on a lead story for the print edition of The Times. It's nigh impossible to impose a lead on the multifarious outputs of the 8,000 or so staff of BBC News. And it's impolitic and unwise to say you're going to do it - dictats are embarassing, and get published.

The machine moves inexorably under your feet while you're expounding your views. Ahead of radio news moving alongside tv news at Television Centre in 1997, 30 or so BBC editors held a dummy news day at a posh Thameside hotel. Mark Damazer was leading the editorial thinking, and at 4pm on a "pretend clock" called a meeting to set lead stories for evening bulletins, as was the tv tradition. While he was talking, a "pretend" news story broke (from the imagination of one Kevin Marsh), and the various radio teams (in those days, ahead of News 24, boasting much more output) naturally went with it, without a chance for Damazer to opine on its relative importance.

Thus the emergence of the Time Lords; this is a BBC pre-meeting, which James Harding will expect to chair, where an intimate circle (we'll try to find out who the new cast are) of thinkers agree on takes, tilts, and steers, rather than leads, and try to nudge the hacks in the direction they think best. Meanwhile, the mechanical planners of Newsgathering have already deployed trucks and resources for the following 24 hours, and the inertia of the news diary rolls on. I'm sure James Harding wouldn't have expected a BBC news story on his first proper day at work, but he got one.

In the United States, Deborah Turness, formerly of ITN, has moved the morning meeting of NBC newsteams to 0900. Will Harding make timetable changes at Dr Evil's Volcano News Lair ? That's nigh impossible too - he also has to connect with Tony Hall's morning conference call - at least until "simplification" arrives.

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