BUSCD 7: Lessons from the guardian

So what does open journalism look like? A man dies at the heart of a protest: a reporter wants to discover the truth. A journalist is seeking to
contact anyone who can explain how another victim died while being restrained on a plane. A newsroom has to digest 400,000 official
documents released simultaneously.
The travel section is searching for a thousand people who know Berlin like the back of their hand. The environment team is seeking to
expand the range, authority and depth of their coverage. The foreign desk wants to harness as many Arab voices as possible to help report
and explain the spring revolutions.
The sports editor is wondering how best to cover every one of the 32 national football teams in the World Cup. The comment editors would
like to broaden the spectrum of debate to include political thinkers scientists, theologians, lawyers … and numerous others in society and
around the world whose voice is not always heard.
A city trader in New York realises he's captured on film the moment the police struck a news seller in the middle of a crowd. A woman
leaving a theatre is moved to write about her response to the play she's just seen. A dozen scientific bloggers group together to reach a
much larger audience. A nurse wants to share her perspective of the NHS changes.
The technology team work out the best way for a newspaper's content to be shared, distributed and connected as easily as possible and
build a piece of open software to make it happen. The developers at cutting edge outfits, small and giant, like that: it means they can easily
incorporate that output into the platforms, products and devices they are building.
The newspaper is moving beyond a newspaper. Journalists are finding they can give the whole picture better. Over a year the readership
grows – a little in print, vastly in digital. Advertisers like it, too.
This is what we mean by open. The newspaper is the Guardian

Sunday, March 18, 12

Pitch Work for the Guardian

BBH/London

All readers and love the Guardian

In recent years, the editor of the Guardian has been
changing how the paper sources (curates) and delivers
(technology/tablets/social) news.

They’ve been trying to communicate it but failed to
explain what Open Journalism actually meant.


We started by trying to ﬁgure out what Open meant to us:
--how we read
--when we read
--where else we accessed content from the paper

We ﬁgured out that the differentiator of Open was a “broad
perspective.”

It wasn’t simply the how – curating, sourcing, welcoming
conversation – but the what that came out of the process. The
“what” being the impact and the perspective that can only be
achieved through such a complete process across so many
sources.


7 teams

30 scripts

All different ways of demonstrating Open

A very young creative team (20-somethings) came up with idea


What if Guardian had covered the ________ “today?”


Initial ideas and topics for demonstration were wrong. To
imply that the paper could have changed the outcome of
history was way too pretentious. And might be the wrong
things to exaggerate.

But he had an idea.

Pick a different story.


The team came back with a fairy tale and a headline. Just a
headline.


Big bad wolf boiled alive.


CD’s suggestion was, “Great, but make it not a
metaphor, but an allegory. Give it a relevance to current
times.”

Ah, the homeowner’s struggle against the banks.


That was it. That was the whole idea.

“I now started to see the entire spot complete and ﬁnished
in my head.” David Kolbusz, CD BBH-London


Not easy to completely sell the spot, even though it was
favorite of client.

There were no visual references during this point. Just
the concept.

The narrative ﬂow, like a movie script. The headlines,
tweets and the story.

The pictures lived only in the imagination.

Client could never imagine what the pigs would actually
look like.


Answer:

“Just imagine it as if the pigs walk among us.”


Agency knew all along that this was the idea.

So, why so many ideas?


“We had to show what was wrong and incomplete
in order to prove what was right.”


CD
CW/AD
Producer
Director
Editor
SFX
Client


The brand itself is social. And open.

--Curating content from multiple sources

--Accommodating the participation of readers and
outside voices

--Celebrating and inviting participation to create that
broader, inclusive perspective


"We are developing an idea of a
newspaper that is very different," says
Rusbridger. "Our approach recognises
the importance of putting a newspaper
at the heart of the open eco-structure
of information so that you can then
harness different voices and link to an
array of other sources.
"We are reaping the rewards for
breaking out of the old mindset of
journalism and understanding that we
can harness, aggregate, curate and
report, which is a distributive model of
journalism that has a richness and
diversity of content."


“This change has been driven by Alan Rusbridger, The
Guardian’s editor and is built on a belief that in the modern
world no single organisation can possibly claim to be sole
arbiter of truth, with experts journalists working in isolation to
pass down the day’s news to the masses.

Instead, for The Guardian, modern news is a dynamic,
participative and open dialogue in which the public and other
news sources enrich and expand stories, inviting response and
opinion. It’s open and mutual rather than closed and didactic.
It’s iterative and alive rather than final and definitive. It’s multi-
platform and digital first.”

from BBH-Labs blog


“Whilst most newspapers jealously guard the stories they are planning to cover, The
Guardian now publish their news lists online daily, encouraging both public and experts to
get in touch with their journalists if they feel the have something to contribute, advise on or
just to have their say.

When the MPs Expenses Scandal exploded, The Guardian swiftly built an app that enabled
the public to get involved, sift through receipts and ﬂag anything they decided was worthy
of investigation.

During Arab Spring, in addition to providing content from its journalists in the ﬁeld, The
Guardian invited Arab commentators to share their views and blog, in Arabic, on the
Guardian’s platform.

The Guardian’s open platform enables anyone to access data collected by the Guardian as
well as providing a search tool so that users can search for government information from
around the world. It also encourages readers to upload their own data visualisations or
share their favourites.”

from BBH-Labs blog


“Comment is free, but facts are sacred.”
Editor CP Scott, 1921


Lessons that marketers can take away from the Guardian.
What is the job of the brand?
How is the consumer viewed (and engaged)?
What other participants are there, could there be?
How do they/can they work together?
What is the role of technology?
Talk about time, timeliness and timing.
What are the connections between brand behavior, content
and media?
What is there “creativity?” (entertainment, utility, context)


BUSCD 7: Lessons from the guardian

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BUSCD 7: Lessons from the guardian