Tim Johns | Radio, video, journalism and so on.

Scientists! The media needs you!

December 4, 2013 — 10 Comments

Scientists want more science, more accurately represented, in the media. Yet I find they so rarely want to come on the radio and talk about it*

I work on a large daily current affairs radio programme, and certain big topics get covered frequently. The state of the economy, immigration laws, high-speed rail, welfare; those and many more get regular outings on air. Climate change is another topic that, in one form or another, will warrant regular discussion.

On most subjects, finding knowledgeable pundits on either side of the debate isn’t too tricky – especially for the ‘big topics’. But when it comes to climate change, something funny happens. In fact, it’s a problem more broadly across most scientific topics.

People don’t want to talk about it. Scientists – the ones who know their stuff the most – seem the most reticent to get on the radio to explain what they know.

Good scientists don’t want to go on air

From the many conversations I’ve had with scientists, university press officers and other science-representation groups, I believe the following to be true: the more specialised a scientist is, the less qualified they feel they are to talk to the media about it.

But why?

Science is a highly complex and specialised profession. Academics trade blows over incredibly niche little-by-little discoveries through peer-reviewed journal articles. The more you know about your specialist field, the more you think you’re not necessarily in a position to be ‘the authority on all of climate change’ (or whatever your specialism is) in a five-minute radio interview.

And, the more you know, the more you dislike the way your speciality is portrayed in the media. The less willing you are to devalue your work by debating it with someone who just hasn’t studied it like you have, and who is out of step with the scientific community.

But here’s the problem: that ‘someone’ is perfectly happy to be on the radio, and there’s a real danger your viewpoint – and more importantly your scientific research – won’t get properly represented.

Global warming sceptics are easy to book

Let me be more specific. Let’s take a basic “is climate change happening?” debate: yes or no. The following is absolutely typical in my experience:

I call round lots of universities and lots of climate change experts. They all say “yes it’s happening” but “no I couldn’t possibly come on the radio today…I’m not the right person for this”. Or, often, “no!! I won’t argue with a climate-change sceptic! They don’t deserve to be on. I don’t want to be party to giving their view equal weight in the debate!”.

Well, there’s one hour left until we’re on air, and at this rate your opponent’s viewpoint will be the only one that gets heard. What’s more – from the conversation I had with you – you sounded like the perfect guest. Please do the interview.

Meanwhile…I find that climate change sceptics are in comparatively short supply. Yet everyone I call on that side is willing to come on the radio in a heartbeat. So here we are in a situation where, because so many scientists are unwilling to come on the radio, the majority scientific viewpoint (in my experience) is in danger of being woefully underrepresented.

I must pause, briefly, to address a question some of you will be thinking:

Why must you represent the minority viewpoint at all? Surely that’s mis-representative?

I’m a radio producer and journalist. I’m not a scientist. I’m not an economist. I’m not a breastfeeding new mum. I’m not a ‘victim of the bedroom tax’. I’m not qualified enough on the vast majority of subjects we discuss to decide to completely silence a particular point of view. If people hold that opinion, it deserves some representation. So it’s my job to do that, rather than to unilaterally stifle particular sides of the argument.

And, as much as many in the scientific community dislike it – there are lots of global warming sceptics, not least our audience. And as with any media debate, if one side makes an overwhelmingly better case, that should shine through on air.

But if no-one’s willing to give that side of the argument, there’s a problem.

But I digress; for more on this particular debate I suggest you read this.

Scientists! Please embrace the media!

I know it’s easier said than done – but I really wish scientists were more happy to come on air. The fact is, the media ‘rules of engagement’ aren’t going to change. Sometimes you’ll only get a few minutes to discuss a HUGELY complicated topic. Sometimes you might have to debate with someone who you quite simply think is wrong and hugely underqualified. But those are the parameters in which the majority of the population will normally discuss your speciality, if at all.

And if you tell me you can’t come on the radio, or you don’t want to, I’m going to have to find someone else who can. And they may well know far less than you. And that’s not annoying for me because it makes my job more difficult. It’s annoying because I care deeply about doing my best to make sure scientific viewpoints are portrayed fairly and accurately to seven million listeners.

Thank goodness, then, for organisations such as the Science Media Centre. They get it – they fight to get science in the media, represented as accurately as possible. They’re adept at responding to media requests. For anyone grumbling about the under-representation or misrepresentation of science in the media – get behind these guys and help them do something about it.

Brian Cox is too busy to do all of the interviews on all of the science all of the time*. Scientists: science needs you!

—

Caveats!!

Coverage of science in the media is a gigantic topic – I could only mention one tiny point here. I’d like to give the above a couple of additional caveats:

1. There are LOTS of brilliant scientists willing to be in the media. I know that. My point is that there are, arguably, not enough!

2. There are LOTS of brilliant scientists willing to discuss climate change. And despite what I write above I’ve never failed to book the guests I need. However, by comparison with other professions, in my personal experience it can prove more difficult.

3. This is NOT a post about the way the media covers science – with the exception of the penultimate section. That’s a whole other debate.

4. Another ‘whole other debate’ is the way the media deals with the ‘climate change debate’ – where the majority of scientists would argue there’s no debate about whether climate change itself is happening. I appreciate that, but it is not my point – I merely use it as an example of an occasion where I’ve found many scientists hesitant to speak.

5. The headline of this article was an exaggeration, ok? (see points 1 – 2!).

6. I’m JOKING about Brian Cox!

In Journalism, Misc, Radio

5 Tips for Making Radio Packages Quickly

October 10, 2013 — 3 Comments

At work I sometimes make radio packages. I work on a daily current affairs programme so it’s important to be able to do it at speed – normally I have about 90 minutes to create something. If you want to include the right music and sound effects, need to find different elements to go into it (such as a vox pop – which might take a bunch of time in itself), and, vitally, get the scripting, accuracy, editorial message and delivery right…90 minutes isn’t that long.

I’ve answered many questions in the past about my methods for churning stuff out at speed – including yesterday when I made a short package about the Higgs Boson. I’ve written some thoughts down, so below are my top five tips for speed-packaging.

listen to ‘Do YOU know what the Higgs Boson is?’ on Audioboo

Top Five Tips in Brief!

Perhaps you’re making a speed-package right now in which case this post is too late. But in the name of brevity – here’s a summary of my top five before a longer explanation below:

Get ready to speed-package NOW – bookmark your favourite websites for sound effects and audio production music.
Take a breath, gather your thoughts. You don’t have long to make this package but spend a few minutes learning your subject and knowing what you might like to include in it.
Do a very quick storyboard and write a script. Use bullet points to map out the messages you want to convey and what other audio or clips you’ll want to use. Then flesh it out with a script.
Learn to edit well. Before you have to make a package quickly make sure you’re half-decent at audio editing.
Have a voice-recording device available NOW! Have a smartphone in your possession that you can record good audio with and know how to use it.

And again – in greater detail:

1. Get ready to speed-package NOW!

Creating something like the package I posted above – at speed – requires being set up and ready to do so. You need a bunch of things already in place, and this is useful both for making packages quickly and for producing radio in general. There are a couple of pretty key things below – look to point 5 for more thoughts.

Sound Effects

“Ok! I need to make a comedy package about a donkey! Right – I need to find a good donkey sound effect.” *Fifteen minutes later…* “I can’t find a good donkey sound effect!”.

You can waste an awfully long time looking for the right sound effect. I’ve collected together a half-decent sound effects library over time, and I make sure it’s always to hand. Do the same – when you use or hear a good sound effect try to grab it for your own FX collection. You can also buy sound effects CDs which is often the simplest way to get everything you might need, and there are also free sound effects websites such as findsounds.com which can be a bit sketchy at times but invaluable at others.

Music

If you work in radio hopefully you have pretty decent access to popular commercial music. But ‘production music’ is often just what your package needs. If you’re making a package about aliens – please don’t use the X-Files theme tune. Instead, get on a production music website and just find something nice and spooky to score your package with. In the package I posted above I used music from westonemusic.com – but there are loads of sites just like this. Google it and explore! If you sign up to these sites and learn how to download the tracks and logging details – you’re ready to very quickly grab music for any occasion when the need arises.

2. Take a breath, gather your thoughts.

If you only have 90 minutes and you know how much work you have to do, it’s easy to see the clock ticking and get straight into scripting your package. But hang on – give yourself ten minutes to make sure you know your subject. If I’m making a factual piece I’ll use these ten minute to read the relevant news articles and see what archive audio is available to me. I’ll perhaps consult colleagues for their creative thoughts and jot down ideas I have that I might like to include. Taking a few minutes to properly understand the topic and what could go into the package helps a lot with point number 3…

3. Do a very quick storyboard and write a script.

This can normally be done whether you’re in the office or out on a job working on a story. Don’t go straight for the script. Think first about what you want to say overall and what audio you have to make that happen. Put that into a storyboard. And by ‘storyboard’ I just mean a sequence of bullet points roughly collecting your thoughts together.

Suppose there’s been a fire at a beach hut and you’re there to report – the ‘storyboard’ might look like this:

FX recorded from scene

Voice intro walking around ruins, end with “the firefighters said it was devastating”

Chief firefighter clip

Record on-location link into archive audio

Archive news audio from the previous fires

Final link from scene – include latest statement from local police

It’s a bit of a simple off-the-top-of-my-head example but you get the idea. Now – flesh it out. It’s much easier to write a script around a few bullet points like this than to write one from start to finish without having a master-plan.

4. Learn to edit well

If you’re a blacksmith you might be great at knowing how to forge iron. But if you’re rubbish at using a hammer, what you make might be useless. If you work in radio your hammer is the ability to edit audio. If it takes you a week to find out how to fade something out then you’ll never create a radio package quickly!

Never dismiss editing as geeky and therefore avoid learning how to do it. If you work in radio but don’t have much time to practice editing, make time. If you have a brilliant idea for a package and a brilliant (and slightly complicated) script, there’s no way you’ll be able to bring it to life quickly unless you’re practiced at the editing process.

5. Have a voice-recording device available NOW!

“Quick! You have to record a package immediately! It needs a few vox pops, some narration, and a clip of an interview.”

If that’s said to me I already know how I will record these things. Different radio stations have different ways of allocating equipment. Perhaps your station has a Marantz you can grab. Maybe you need to book kit out. Or it could be that it’s incredibly difficult to get something to record audio on at short notice – and even then perhaps the office is lacking in card-readers to get the audio onto your computer.

I make sure that wherever I work I know how I might quickly be able to go and record something. Basically – I know how to use the voicememo bit of my iPhone, how to email that back to myself, and how to convert that to a file I can use with my audio editing software. It’s not complicated, and there are plenty of smartphone apps that do a similar thing with .mp3 files – but the point is you have to know exactly how to do it, and be able to do it, in advance of when you need to make your speed-package!

That’s it

But here’s another one I made about PANDAS:

listen to ‘Panda: a baby is born? ’ on Audioboo

In Journalism, Radio, Student Radio

Should ALL new journalists be on Twitter? (Yes).

July 25, 2013 — Leave a comment

A ‘budding 23-year-old journalist’ was recently commissioned to write an article for a national paper, in which she made it clear she’d like more journalism work.

It was a great, well written piece. She has a distinctive name but when I went to share the article on Twitter I couldn’t find her to properly attribute the piece.

We discussed her article in the morning meeting at work and considered chatting to her about it on the radio*. I made the point that I thought any journalist starting out SHOULD be on Twitter. Not everyone agreed.

Stupid Twitter

Why should you have to be on Twitter? It’s geeky and annoying. It’s yet another social media fad soon to be replaced with something else (? – a whole other debate entirely). Why does everything these days have to be online and tweeted every five seconds? Why can’t you cut your teeth as a journalist through pure journalistic talent? Isn’t Twitter just for posting what you had for lunch?** (These aren’t actually all things my colleagues said).

I think a lot of that is largely irrelevant to this question. Whether you think Twitter is useful, and whether you want to be on there or not is sort of beside the point. If you’re starting out as a journalist I think there’s no question that you SHOULD be on there.

Clever Twitter!

Please don’t tweet about food

How can you keep track of what your peers are doing if you’re not on there? All the people at the top of their game in the journalism industry are on there – surely you need to know what they’re up to and how they’re using it? Surely if they’re using Twitter you just look like you’re left behind if you’re not? How can you properly track breaking news unless you’re watching the social networks people around the world currently use to break it? How can you build and develop your skills in social media? Even if you don’t care, you need them, and need to prove to potential employers that you have them. All of this is more acute when you’re younger; when you should be at the cutting edge of such things.

I’m not arguing (though I could) that people who have already-established journalism careers need to be on there. Or that new journalists have to be really active users. And I’m not wanging on about the importance of Twitter itself. I’m simply stating that if you’re starting out as a new journalist, you SHOULD be on Twitter.

Surely?

*We never talked to her on the radio because, as well as not being on Twitter, her blog had only one generic email address which produced no response all day.

**This is an increasingly boring comment to make.

In Journalism, Radio

iTunes Radio: should the radio industry care what it’s called?

June 11, 2013 — Leave a comment

Apple has announced ‘iTunes Radio’. It’ll be joining the likes of Last.fm, Pandora, Spotify, MySpace and so on in trying to feed you a diet of music tailored to your tastes.

After it was announced, I saw a large number of comments on Twitter and Facebook from radio types along the lines of “someone should tell them it’s not actually RADIO”, “the word radio should only be used for actual radio!” and “save the word radio!”.

It reminded me of a blog post from James Cridland a couple of years back where he argued strongly that Pandora, a streaming music service in the US (which Pandora calls ‘internet radio’), was not radio.

By actively incorporating the term into the name of an on-demand music streaming service, is Apple undermining the sanctity of the traditional radio industry? Should this rather fragile industry mount a collective trusty steed and ride out on a campaign to protect the traditional definition and meaning of the term ‘radio’?

I argue: no.

Times change; get over it.

The name ‘iTunes Radio’ can only contribute to consumers, over time, lumping together in their heads ‘traditional’ radio with on demand streaming services. While this, inevitably, can only be bad news for the radio industry, fighting that battle on the grounds of a single word is pointless. Not least because we would lose. For a start, the only reason people really care is because the on demand product is a threat to the industry regardless of what it’s called. Apple’s use of the term radio only adds to our fear and is a peg on which to hang it.

A battle not worth fighting

Secondly, it’s a pointless battle to fight because the radio industry could never win. Who is going to front the cash to take Apple to court in the hope that a judge defines a new legal framework which would require a product or service to have a certain specification before it is permitted to use the very broadly defined term ‘radio’? No-one, because it wouldn’t happen. Another reason no-one’s going to waste their limited cash doing that is because we know deep down that protecting the word wouldn’t really make much difference in the long run.

iTunes Radio screenshot 2

Imagine it happened tomorrow. Thanks to a court ruling against the likes of Apple you can now only use the term ‘radio’ if you’re broadcasting curated audio content in a linear format. In ten years’ time would Apple’s on-demand music service have withered and died? Of course not. Apple would be laughing all the way to the bank, with two fingers up at an industry that a decade ago believed that if their precious definition was retained, they would somehow have been far more powerful in the fight against the on demand personalised music-streaming model.

This plays Last FM. Is that radio?

Language evolves

As well as the fact there’s little point in fighting a battle that can’t be won, we need to accept that language changes over time. Sad as it may seem to some, the term ‘radio’ will evolve and refer to a wider range of services in the future. If I were entering the same market as Apple is with this product, I would absolutely be sure to include the word radio, and I would strongly feel that I had every right to do so.

There is also the argument that online music services can already be defined as radio. Look at the Roberts iStream radio set (as one example). It’s an internet radio that doesn’t only stream online stations along with its FM and DAB modes, but also runs Last FM. If you flicked that on in the kitchen while you cooked your tea, I certainly wouldn’t correct you if when asked “what are you listening to?” you replied: “the radio”. Similarly I wouldn’t question that the person watching House of Cards on Netflix was “watching TV”. And what will you tell me you’re doing when you’re watching the last hour of the Radio 1 Chart Show?

So I say let’s not waste our energy getting upset at new technology that weakens the traditional definition of radio. After all, with the radio industry shifting some focus to social media, online activity and the ever-increasing presence of visualisation, who’s to say that before too long a lot of our own work will fall foul of a more traditional definition of radio?

In Radio

My Top Tip for Student Radio Award Entries

April 23, 2013 — 2 Comments

Unfortunately I couldn’t make it to this year’s Student Radio Conference hosted by the wonderful Demon FM in Leicester.

However, I was there in spirit, as I contributed a tip to the session about putting together the best award entry if you’re entering the Student Radio Awards.

Here it is. Last year I chaired the judging for the ‘Best Male’ category and this tip is based quite specifically on last year’s entries – so it may not be useful for categories such as ‘Best OB’, and it may seem obvious, but it is important.

This video was just part of a much longer session with all sorts of tips to help you make the best award entries, so it is just one small point among many – but hope it helps.

In Student Radio

SHOCKER – CANCER UP 30% (Or just bad reporting?)

April 2, 2013 — 4 Comments

If you’re a man and watch or read the news today you may, understandably, be worried.

“Bowel cancer rates in men soar by a quarter“…

…proclaims the Daily Mail.

“Bowel cancer rates for men rise by 29%” writes The Independent, and The Guardian reports a rise of “nearly 30% in 35 years”. Stick ‘bowel cancer’ into Google News and you’ll see similar reporting across the board.

These headlines are actually relatively accurate. However, as much as headlines need to sell a story, they shouldn’t scaremonger or mislead; which I believe these do. I would think it reasonable for a person reading these headlines to, at a glance, believe their likelihood of getting bowel cancer to be up by nearly a third, or that 30% more people they know will be getting it. But that’s not the case at all.

Let me argue for a moment that today’s headlines could have, in fact, been more like:

“Bowel cancer survival up, as rate of new patients with the disease remains unchanged”

The numbers

I’m not a statistician, but broadly speaking…

The key word in all of this is rate. Cancer rates have risen 29% in 35 years (for bowel cancer in men, according to the stats from Cancer Research UK). The rate refers to the number of people getting the disease per 100,000, which is a world away from simply ‘the number of people getting the disease’. You might reasonably assume the phrase ‘rate of cancer’ refers to the latter if you didn’t know better.

In 1975-77, the rate of bowel cancer for men was 45 in 100,000. In 2008-10, it’s 58. So after 35 years, 13 more men per 100,000 are likely to get bowel cancer. That’s 1.3 per 10,000. That’s 0.13 per thousand. These numbers suddenly seem less scary than something involving THIRTY PERCENT.

35 years later (assuming 50/50 men/women for the following examples), you could say that the number of men who might get bowel cancer in the City of Ely, Cambridgeshire, has gone up by one person. At a full capacity concert, Wembley Stadium would hold maybe seven more men who might get it – but only if almost a quarter of the crowd were 60 years old or above (more on that in a minute…).

Don’t get me wrong – cancer’s on the increase and it’s not good. But it’s as true to say “SOME CANCER RATES UP 30%!” as it is to say “the number of men per thousand getting bowel cancer in the last 35 years has risen by 0.13”.

An aging population

A key part of this story is to be found in the news copy beneath the terrifying headlines.

“The age group with the biggest rise [in bowel cancer] is those in their 60s and 70s, who experience 23,000 new cases a year.”

Ah, ok. So how many new cases are there each year, in ‘real’ numbers? The total number of new cases in the UK for 2010 was 40,695 (this is no longer gender specific).

So over 50% of new bowel cancer cases are now in the 60+ age group. We know there’s an ageing population, and a greater proportion of the UK is over 60 compared to 35 years ago. If bowel cancer is far more common in this age group, we would be expecting the rate to rise as the population ages.

But why let that dent a strong headline?

Create your own headlines!

Today’s bold page-headers refer to changes in bowel cancer rates over 35 years. But with the same data today’s news came from, let’s try out a headline for, say, the change over ten years – again with male bowel cancer rates.

In 1998-2000 the rate was 57 per 100,000. As we know the rate for 2008-10 is 58 (I’m looking at Figure 1.2 here).

So how’s this for a headline:

Bowel cancer rates remain largely unchanged over the past ten years

Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it… There’s another key bit of info in today’s news too – that cancer survival rates have doubled in the last 40 years.

So why don’t we go for:

Bowel cancer survival up, as rate of new patients with the disease remains unchanged

That’s not right either

Cancer is a huge problem. Trends over time show that rates are increasing. Anecdotally most people know this – sadly – from personal experience.

I think headlines like the rather boring one I wrote just above, are just as irresponsible as ones that blindly report 30% increases.

My main argument here is that unless you think the majority of people reading your headline know that ‘cancer rates’ refers to ‘the number of people per 100,000’, you should perhaps think again about how you portray the story.

If you compare today’s news articles with the original press release you’ll see the majority are largely cut-and-paste jobs. When it comes to something like cancer, just regurgitating the stats from a press release isn’t always good enough.

An incredible book for any journalist is ‘The Tiger That Isn’t’ by Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot. It will make you think twice before reporting any statistic – from cancer rates to unemployment figures and beyond. I can’t recommend it enough.

In Journalism

Demystifying BBC Radio Job Titles

March 12, 2013 — 8 Comments

Job titles and job descriptions rarely do enough to tell you whether you realistically have a shot at getting a position or not. And that’s very true when you’re starting out at the BBC. ‘Producer’, ‘Researcher’, ‘Broadcast Assistant’ and others are titles thrown around that do nothing to explain how much experience you might need to get that job.

I started in student radio where most people do some sort of ‘producer’ role – but knowing how that experience applies to being a BBC ‘Producer’ can be mystifying. So the below is some information I wish I’d had when I graduated and set out to work for the BBC. It certainly won’t ‘demystify’, but it may ‘very very slightly demystify something’.

BBC Jobs Website

The organisation is so big, and job titles are so few, that no doubt for much of what I write there will be examples for which the opposite is true. I’m also only going to write about a few examples, otherwise we’ll be here all week.

I’ve done a few jobs in BBC radio where the headline job-title didn’t really sum up quite what I did.

When I was a Broadcast Assistant I often felt more like an Assistant Producer, and sometimes even a Technical Operator. As a local radio Broadcast Journalist I usually thought I was more of a Producer or Presenter, and now I’m a Producer I feel more like a Broadcast Journalist. And so on.

Job titles are more like job grades

The first and perhaps most important thing to say about BBC job titles in radio, is that they often say far more about the ‘grade/level’ of the job than about what that job specifically involves. To make it more complicated, different departments can use different titles for what are often broadly the same jobs.

When looking at job titles on the BBC jobs website, it’s worth taking a closer look at the job’s numerical grade. You’ll see a number from 1 – 11. The majority of jobs are grades 3 – 7, and the grades give you a better idea of how senior the job is and correspondingly how much experience you might need to stand a chance of getting it. It goes without saying that where the job is plays a huge part in its competitiveness too – a grade 5 job on the Radio 1 breakfast show is infinitely more competitive than a grade 5 job as the district reporter for Slough (no offence if that job actually exists and it’s yours).

In fact, not so long ago I had a grade 5 staff job (permanent) in local radio and applied for a grade 2 part-time job on a national programme I really wanted to work on. That’s unusual, but such can be the discrepancy. I didn’t get it.

Local vs. National

You could be doing a pretty much identical job in BBC Local Radio to a job on national radio but have a different job title. Titles also differ between different national networks.

On top of that there are the ‘nations’ – BBC Wales/Scotland/Northern Ireland. They have a whole mix of all the different job titles used by network and by local radio.

And on top of that you can make BBC programmes for independent production companies – those companies choose their own job titles (often in line with the BBC) – but I’m leaving that out of this post.

BBC Local Radio

Over-generalising (as I am through this entire post) the local radio ‘ranks’ are a bit like this:

The BBC jobs website highlights some common roles

Broadcast Assistant – grade 3
Broadcast Journalist – grade 5 (more experienced staff and some positions will be grade 7)
Senior Broadcast Journalist – grade 8 (and up)
Senior broadcast journalists make up a lot of the management team (eg. News Editor) and the boss of the station is the Managing Editor.

The most striking omission from this list is ‘Presenter’. Typically, BBC Local Radio presenters are categorised as ‘Broadcast Journalists’ – which because of the news-focussed programming, they often are.

Something also lacking from local radio is the ‘Producer’ job title. You can be an assistant producer or the producer of a programme in local radio but your main job title will be Broadcast Assistant or Broadcast Journalist. Likewise, in network radio (national) your job title may be Producer or Researcher but depending on the programme you may need to be a broadcast journalist first and foremost.

The ‘entry level’ job in local radio is usually the Broadcast Assistant role. But if you’re just starting out (even if you’ve done lots of student radio for example) you may not find it easy to simply apply for a job at a station you’ve never worked in and get it (see the last bit of this post for a more typical route in to employment).

If you’re fresh out of a journalism post-grad you may be aiming for a Broadcast Journalist job. The majority of people getting their first BBC Local Radio Broadcast Journalist job have either freelanced for a while at the station where they finally get a contract, have come from a job in commercial radio, or sometimes have come from newspaper/print/online.

National Radio

Network radio is understandably more complicated because it covers hundreds of programmes across multiple networks. But I just want to mention a few job titles that I often hear graduates discussing, wondering whether they should apply or not. With the grades below – they can all be +2 in some instances.

As I write, an AP job is being advertised grade 5-7, showing there are always exceptions to ‘rules’

Unit Assistant – grade 2
Broadcast Assistant – grade 3/5
Assistant Producer – grade 5
Researcher – grade 5
Broadcast Journalist – grade 7
Producer – grade 7
Senior Producer/Editor/other – grades 8 and above

Even more so in network (because of its even more competitive nature) if you’re starting your career and apply for a full-time contract as any of these positions you’re unlikely to get too far. Normally people get work experience and the occasional paid shift, and work their way up the ladder from there, or get experience elsewhere then move across.

I’d like to highlight a couple of job titles above that are a little misleading to anyone browsing the BBC jobs website for the first time. I know a lot of people, based purely on the title, assume ‘Assistant Producer’ and ‘Researcher’ roles would be quite junior and within their reach. And why not, one’s got ‘assistant’ in the title and one seems to be about doing (for all you know) ‘a bit of background research’ for whatever the programme is. But those roles aren’t typically entry-level jobs, and getting a full-time contract as an AP or Researcher on a national BBC radio station is a rare thing as your first paid radio job.

Contracts

The issue of contracts is a whole other essay. But typically the longer the contract the more competitive it might be. If you’re starting out you’ve far less chance of going straight in with a job that’s advertised as permanent (continuing). Equally a 12-month contract may be more difficult to get than a 3-month contract.

A typical way to get a job

Ok – there’s not really a typical scenario because there will be examples of just about everything under the sun. But this is a route that I’ve seen time and time again:

Sitting in on a show can often lead to work experience
That can lead to continued work experience on a particular programme
Eventually, along comes an opportunity for paid shifts on freelance/casual contract
Now you’re on the books and part of a team – you may get more shifts on more teams across the radio station you’re working for
Now you’re in a good position to apply for a full-time contract if one comes up. Alternatively if something comes up the boss might be able to give you a short contract (for example to cover absence or work on a special project)
Once you’re on a contract, if you apply elsewhere for similar roles you’ll have more chance (not just because ‘being on a contract’ is important, but typically by this stage you’ll have a lot more experience)
Once you’re on a fixed-term contract in a particular department (ie. for a specified period of time, normally a number of months), you have a better chance at getting a permanent job if one comes up

“I Hate Journalism”

January 14, 2013 — 4 Comments

That’s a sentiment which could well be echoed by anyone who feels that TV and radio news bulletins and programme cues often sound like formulaic, uncreative pieces of churnalism.

I mean it could be. It might not be. I’m just guessing.

Anyway, see what I did there? My opening paragraph was a bit boring and generic so I headlined the piece with the trashy top-line ‘I hate journalism’. I apologise if at this stage you feel cheated into reading this. But that’s the point. It was a cheap tactic.

I don’t hate journalism. I’d actually like to share a few thoughts about my love/hate relationship with the ‘delayed drop’.

The delayed drop

A delayed drop is a technique you’ll be all too familiar with when you hear it (and read it – but I’ll talk here about broadcast journalism rather than print). Basically it’s when the crux of the story is delivered after something a little more sensational.

You can just imagine this news bulletin:

It’s been described as the most dramatic shake-up of the system for years.

Today, the pensions minister announced a radical change to state pensions…

The top-line is just a sexed-up tease; the detail follows in the second line. This sort of delayed drop seems to be ubiquitous. You can’t escape it. However, it’s a relatively gentle example. What sometimes grieves me more is when a direct quote is used:

Piers Morgan should be deported because, among other things, he’s a hatchet man of the New World Order.

Those are the views of one pro-gun American radio talk-show host who came to blows with the former British newspaper editor when interviewed on Piers Morgan’s CNN programme.

If that story arrived out of context right after a piece about a happy dolphin that had been saved, you can see how it might grab your attention.

You can basically take any old dramatic quote and shamelessly spice up your copy by making the quote your top-line.

“STOP EATING US AND GET OFF OUR MILK!” Those are the demands of…

Love*

As I say I have a love/hate relationship with these sorts of delayed drops.

I think it’s good to have varied copy. Sometimes you really can use them to entice a listener or viewer in to the story. Sometimes you can use the direct quote angle to slap someone in the face with a shocking statement or opinion out of the blue to grab their attention, before delivering the finer details.

It’s more interesting to use a delayed drop here and there than to never use them, but…

Hate

…they’re horribly overused. That’s my problem with them

If someone’s written a news story with a delayed drop, known they’ve done it, and have decided why that’s the best way to deliver the story, fine. So long as they’re not doing it too often.

The trouble is it too often sounds to me like a knee-jerk reaction to spice-up a boring story in an incredibly un-spicy and lazy way, or it just sounds like someone’s following a formula they were taught in journalism school.

If you go back to listening to news bulletins with a heightened awareness of the delayed drop after reading this, it won’t be long until you hear one. And the more commonplace the delayed drop becomes the less useful and less creative journalistic tool it becomes.

If your delayed drop sounds generic and boring, perhaps you should just face the fact the story isn’t incredible and just write it straight. Save the drop for another day.

* I perhaps wrote too much in defence of the delayed drop, because I want to cover my own back knowing that I have used them in the past, and will in the future. In honesty…I mostly hate them.

In Journalism, Radio

Don’t tell your interviewee what you’re going to ask them

December 5, 2012 — Leave a comment

Well, tell them roughly what you’re going to ask them, but don’t give them precise questions.

I post this because I’ve noticed that for almost every interview I’ve ever given to journalism or media students, they’ve tried to tell me beforehand the exact questions they’ll want to ask me in the interview. While I may only be giving interviews about non-political subjects such as Lincoln Shorts, BBC Introducing or student radio, the principles about briefing a guest remain.

My frustration lies with the fact that I feel like students are routinely taught to hand over interview questions in advance. I work full-time in radio and behind the microphone I’m careful not to hand over specific questions, so when I’m in front of the mic there’s a certain annoyance when question-handing-over occurs.

Imagine if Michael Howard had been handed the precise questions for this interview before he agreed to go on air…

The beauty of questions not being prescribed is that things like this can happen.

Repeatedly (when I’ve been the interviewee, booked by student journalists) I’ve experienced an interview setup that’s something like this (because it’s been taught that way):

1) Email contributor, ask if they’ll be interviewed

2) If they say yes, decide what you will ask them and email them the questions

3) Go and interview them

Points one and three are marvellous, number two is not.

Yes, it’s a difficult line to tread. The person you’re interviewing needs to know what the interview’s about. They need to know the sort of thing they will be asked. They need to know if they will have to debate the subject with someone else. They need to understand where the conversation could go and what topics could be discussed. You need to make sure they’re clear on the nature of the interview and the interviewer (for example you shouldn’t tell them it’ll be a fluffy interview where they can promote their goat-hairdressing business if in fact you’re planning to pit them against Jeremy Paxman who’s set to make the case for how goat-hairdressing businesses are tearing the UK apart).

But – it’s remarkably rare you would ever give your interviewee a precise list of questions. It doesn’t (for the most part) happen in the professional broadcasting world, so if you’re ever taught that’s what you should do, well, it’s wrong.

It needs a bit of common sense; most of the above can usually be dealt with very easily. For example, if you interview a local councillor for a community radio station about a sponsored charity walk they’re doing, you probably just need to say “can I interview you about your walk?”. If you’re trying to set up the head of a local NHS trust to debate abortion ethics with someone else you’re going to have to give them a lot more detail. But for neither of those examples should precise questions be handed out.

Biased as I may be, I think the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines have much wisdom scattered throughout them. On this topic, I believe this section sums things up perfectly regarding potential guests:

The more significant their contribution, the more detail we should provide. We should normally expect to explain the following:

The kind of contribution they are expected to make. We should tell them in advance about the range of views being represented in the specific content to which they are contributing and, wherever possible, the names of other likely contributors

We can only give a broad outline of question areas because the direction the interview takes will be dependent on what is said

You can read more about that here – and in fact the entire guidelines are online here.

Allowing an interview the possibility of going anywhere is all part of a democratic society with a strong, independent broadcast and print media. If that’s not enough for you, there’s one final reason why you shouldn’t give precise questions to your guest if you work in radio or video:

Your interviewee will often sound BORING.

If they’re used to being interviewed, like the head of a prominent charity or a local MP might be, it won’t be a problem. But most people aren’t used to being interviewed, and when given a set of specific questions will prepare a set of specific answers, and churn them out on tape or on camera like robots. Boring robots. Way more boring than the ones in ‘I, Robot’ feat. Will Smith. And if you’re broadcasting you don’t want to be boring.

So keep the specific questions to yourself.

In Radio, Student Radio

Why spelling and grammar are important in radio

November 20, 2012 — 1 Comment

Many working in radio, including broadcast journalists, are pretty awful at spelling and grammar. I’m not perfect so don’t shoot me down if I make a mistake in this post…(though I am totally asking for it).

Plenty struggle with the ol’ spelling thing, especially when working under pressure or at speed. That’s fine. But I’ve also met plenty who think it’s ok to be lax because it’s ‘just for radio’. This seems to make them more likely not to check what they’ve written or to be lazy about trying to improve.

I’m including here spelling accuracy – that is – making sure you’re spelling people’s names correctly and getting details like job-titles perfect.

Just cos’ your working in radio its, not ok too get the SPAG all bad.

There are many reasons why, but here are just a few.

Getting handed this last-minute note as a presenter would suck

Social media

Twitter and Facebook are the obvious examples.

You write up some research on a music track for radio-play and spell the artist’s name wrong. Someone else could have a look at what you’ve done and tweet that.

You get the spelling wrong of a place name in a news bulletin. Before you know it someone’s looked at your script and tweeted it from your station’s official account.

You may work in radio but it’s increasingly likely that you’ll also write tweets and Facebook messages on official accounts yourself. Sloppy spelling, missing capital letters and strange punctuation makes your brand look rubbish, unprofessional and less authoritative, perhaps especially if it’s journalism-based.

Who knows where your words will end up

This is especially true of any organisation with multiple outlets, but my example is specific to the BBC, where I have the most experience.

We use a shared bit of software across all of BBC News. Anyone can read what I write in a radio script. I can read the scripts of others. And you’ve no idea where your words could end up. Once you’ve saved something in a ‘greened’ script (ie. ready for broadcast) it’s assumed that it encompasses all the BBC values of accuracy.

Let’s say I’m working in an empty BBC newsroom for a local radio station on a Sunday evening when there’s a MASSIVE local fire. I write a quick bit of copy for the regional news bulletin. All I want to do is be the first, the quickest with the information. In my three lines I misspell the name of the fire officer who told me they were “working hard to control the fire”, because I don’t have time to check the spelling. I know how it’s pronounced so I give it my best guess, because it’s ‘just for radio’.

Despite the fact I’m sitting alone in a small office, and it’s been successfully read on air to a few thousand people, suddenly what I’ve written starts appearing elsewhere. There it is on the ticker on the BBC News Channel. Then BBC Breaking News have tweeted the quote. Then BBC News Online have written an article. Then it’s on 5Live and they’re tweeting it. And so on. Suddenly something with the wrong spelling has spread to the entire BBC network.

Sight-reading on air

A presenter reading stuff on air from a script they’ve never seen before is called sight-reading.

Whether you’re a producer, journalist, broadcast assistant or manager: mess up your spelling and grammar, and sight-reading becomes a whole lot more difficult for the presenter. What goes out on air can then sound a whole lot worse. And someone probably gets annoyed at you.

Even if what you’ve written sounds phonetically right, it can mess up the train of thought and lead to awkward uncertainty when read on air. ‘Their’ instead of ‘there’ and ‘its’ instead of ‘it’s’ suddenly changes the meaning of a sentence and to a shrewd presenter makes it a lot more difficult to make sense of a sentence.

And an misplaced, comma can make a sentence, sound rediculous when, read, allowed.

Would you have read that last sentence out loud perfectly the first time you saw it, if you were also on air at the time?

What others think of you

I generally find those working in radio to be helpful, supportive and accommodating, but equally ruthless when help and support is not deserved.

If you struggle with spelling and grammar and say so, or perhaps do your best despite dyslexia, no-one’s going to mind. But if you’re of the opinion that it’s not a top priority because ‘it’s just radio’ you’ll be judged pretty quickly by some colleagues, bosses and potential employers.

If in doubt, take your time, double-check what you’ve written, and don’t worry about asking someone else to check it too. Someone can make a snap decision about your ability simply based on how you’ve written an email to them asking about work experience. If you’re continually making mistakes working as a broadcast journalist or senior producer the damage can be worse.