The Society of Editors – representing newspaper, broadcast and online editors – is holding its annual conference in Belfast. Lord Leveson’s report is due out within weeks and discussion about the possible models of regulation and how editors would live with them was set to dominate the agenda.
The BBC’s difficulties have cast their shadow over proceedings too. The outgoing President of the Society of Editors – Fran Unsworth – filmed a quick video message to welcome delegates to the conference, before hopping on a plane to return to New Broadcasting House in London where she took over as Acting Director of News. Another absentee was Iain Overton who resigned from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism which worked with Newsnight on the flawed investigation into north Wales abuse.
I spoke to ex-editor and media pundit Steve Dyson this evening about the conference. (I’ve previously blogged about Steve’s review of our three daily regional papers.)
He spoke about editors’ expectations on Leveson, distribution costs and profit margins, the tablet future, journalism training, representation of Northern Ireland stories in the national press, as well as the future of the dead tree industry.
Hold the Front Page has been live-blogging the conference; the Society of Editors are streaming much of the proceedings too.
Alan Meban. Tweets as @alaninbelfast. Blogs about cinema and theatre over at Alan in Belfast. A freelancer who writes about, reports from, live-tweets and live-streams civic, academic and political events and conferences. He delivers social media training/coaching; produces podcasts and radio programmes; is a FactCheckNI director; a member of Ofcom’s Advisory Committee for Northern Ireland; and a member of the Corrymeela Community.
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