The old, staid BBC is no more. “Auntie Beeb” got a new look this week and, more importantly, a new structure. The visual rebranding features slick new graphics, including a swirling red globe that has some viewers complaining of nausea, according to the London Times. The network also rebranded its all-news channel. What was “News 24” is now simply BBC News, part of an attempt to bring “coherence” to the huge operation. Peter Horrocks, the head of the BBC’s multimedia news operation, described the changes as “an evolution, to enable audiences to recognise BBC News whenever and wherever they receive it.”
Behind the scenes, the changes are more profound, according to the Guardian newspaper:
The cosmetic improvements are part of a more fundamental change: radio, television and internet journalists will now sit alongside one another for the first time, working more closely across every platform. The aim is to deliver a better service for less money, and reinvigorate the BBC’s sprawling news empire by giving it greater clarity of purpose.
No longer will the BBC send multiple journalists out to report the same story for different platforms. In the new converged newsroom, one journalist will file for multiple platforms. At the RTNDA convention last week, the BBC’s Maxine Mawhinney said the company’s College of Journalism, launched in 2005, is now training young journalists to do just that. It’s hard to find much evidence of that on the BBC’s training and development site, however. I see only one course–Web writing–that’s clearly not broadcast-focused.
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