The Editors @ BBC News

On 12 May the BBC quietly launched a new blog, not from an individual, not about an event and not even on a specific subject, this is one of the most interesting concepts I’ve seen so far.

The blog is called, The Editors and no it isn’t produced by the comedy department (although it could make for a wonderful piece of satire).

The Editors is a blog where any editor working for any news department in the BBC can post.

It tackles things like whether Big Brother is newsworthy, talks about the BBC in the media and gives users the inside story from BBC Newsrooms.

At the moment, while the BBC decide whether there would be public interest it’s only available to BBC staff and is only a six week trial.

With this trial the BBC are following The Daily Mail, The Guardian and other news agencies who have already launched ‘Editor Blogs’.

The difference with this service is that it’s open for any BBC editor across all platforms and around the world to post articles and is specifically about the way the BBC tackles stories and works internally.

It’s being done in response to the Creative Future events and findings and aims to bring the BBC closer to its audience.

The first post on The Editors blog explains exactly what they aim to achieve and why they’re doing it.

“This blog aims to explain the editorial decisions and dilemmas faced by the teams running the BBC’s news service - radio, TV, and interactive, both domestic and international.”

This is open to every editor working in any news department for the BBC anywhere in the world and for any platform.

The BBC’s Director of News, Helen Boaden posted this on her welcome entry about why it’s happening “It will give us a chance to explain directly to our audiences the dilemmas we face and how we work our way through them”.

She goes on to say that “It should demonstrate how careful and thoughtful we try to be; how much fairness and impartiality matter to us and above all, how much we want to get it right for the audience”.

And slightly tounge in cheek she says “I also hope that it might correct the impression that our editors have no sense of humour”.

I can’t give you a link to the blog as it’s only available to staff inside the BBC at the moment as a trial to see if it’s worth launching publicly - it will run for the next six weeks and then I’m guessing they’ll decide.

I may have to remove this post as I’m not sure whether I’m allowed to blog about it but I don’t see why I wouldn’t be - so I’m going for it anyway.

What do you think? Would you read a blog where editors from across the BBC could/would/will be posting about … well … about the news?

Some of the most recent postings have included titles like: “Big Brother - news or not?”, “No place for gnome”, “Big Screen TV” and “Re-brand awareness”.

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