Up close and personal with BBC's deputy editor

I've always known about BBC and occasionally read something of their site but with all of the media competition in the U.S. - from the New York Times to the Washington Post to CNN, BBC was one of my last stops for news. But when Deputy Editor Paul Brannon made a presentation in class last week, it made me think a lot about the success of BBC, especially in Europe and what it has that American media is lacking - and to me it seems like the biggest thing in that category is user-generated content.

In his presentation, Brannon spent a lot of time talking about and giving examples of user generated content on BBC's site and I find it fascinating - every day people are submitting content for BBC to share with the rest of Britain, Europe and really the world. The only parallel I could think of in American media is freelancing, where people who are not employed distinctly by a media organization market their work to different media for a fee, but even that doesn't really compare.

From what Brannon said, user-generated content became a huge part of BBC content after the London bombings last summer - they even have a whole division in charge of it for God's sake. People in the city were using camera phones and video recorders or digital cameras to record what was happening among the chaos and BBC was able to get firsthand footage out of it. Brannon said on that day, BBC received 20,000 e-mails, 1,000 images and 3,000 texts from readers who wanted to either share their experiences with BBC or let them know what was going on. BBC reporters couldn't be in the subways filming the aftermath of the bombings, but the victims who had camera phones could - and that makes for powerful video. The fact that BBC took content from the average European and used it to convey the stories on the bombings, to me is outrageous. And since then, user generated content - which doesn't really equate to freelance on the one front that these people are not getting paid for BBC to use their stuff - has filled BBC's pages and broadcasts.

This concept is not all good. As Brannon pointed out, one of the main problems with accepting user-generated content is the frauds you will inevitably receive. Brannon showed us several photo shopped pictures or stolen art people tried to pass off as their own. Of course, you have to be careful but it shouldn't stop BBC from doing it.

I think this decision by BBC to accept user-generated content shows their embrace of Web 2.0 culture - something American media has yet to do to this extent. By allowing this, BBC is making their site more interactive for users and probably gaining a bigger following because readers can be directly involved in news gathering. It's something to connect them to BBC instead of some other media. I also think, since the site is already well-respected throughout Europe, this decision can only be seen positively. BBC is not too prestigious to share their role with the public - in fact, they encourage the public to join in. I think American media is still a little too pretentious and not trusting enough to concede a portion of their news gathering jobs to the average person and that's unfortunate. User-generated content seems like a great way to keep readers involved in media in an information age where newspapers aren't even necessary to get the news anymore. Maybe a direct connection with readers is what we need to save traditional journalism - and maybe that's why blogs have become such a successful media tool. What do you think?