BBC College of Journalism Relaunches With Improved Site

"…an engaging, useful service for fundamental journalism training."  --CHOICE

NEW YORK, June 25, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The BBC and Oxford University Press announced today it went live with a number of  changes to the BBC College of Journalism site.  The new BBC College of Journalism site will pull back the curtain on the best practices in BBC national and international newsrooms with a radically new interface and enhanced functionality. The site will retain the authority and credibility of the original site, articulating the key principles that guide BBC journalism, while integrating additional social and multimedia functionality and expanding its blog and discussion area.

"Over its 80-year history, the BBC has earned an unmatched, global reputation for its journalism," noted Damon Zucca, Editorial Director for Reference products at OUP.  "Through the BBC College of Journalism, it now provides a resource which offers continuous professional development to all journalists."

Key content features:

• Offers a comprehensive education program on a wide range of "beats" covered by journalists, including politics, religion, economics, business, the environment, and more
• Allows users to choose content based on their media preferences for TV, radio, and text-based journalism
• Content Collections will allow users to seamlessly view all content on a given subject from across the site, cutting down on research time
• Editorial program the BBC College of Journalism is overseen by Editor in Chief, Matthew Eltringham, the former Assistant Editor for Interactivity and Social Media Development at the BBC. He has a permanent staff and is able to draw on BBC journalists from across the world—ensuring that content meets the highest standards.
• Updated on a rolling basis with new coverage being determined by demand from journalists and current events dominating the headlines; this guarantees that the site is the most up-to-date, practical resource available to journalists and students from across the globe
• Customizable search results can be sorted by date or relevance, tailoring each inquiry to the user's needs for ease and speed of research
• Journalists will be able to find guides to all of the skills required within the profession.  Including:

• Producing Interviews
• Editing
• Filming & Recording
• Writing
• Reporting
• Presenting
• Researching & Producing
• Use of Social media

"The new look will reinforce our editorial purpose – we are a site about BBC journalism that was founded to support BBC journalists in their work. But we also know that many, many thousands of professional, community, and student journalists in newsrooms, journalism colleges, and even bedrooms across the world use our site. We hope that by shining a light on our journalism and what we consider to be the best practice of some of our most senior journalists we can share what we have learnt." Matthew Eltringham, Editor in Chief, BBC College of Journalism.

The BBC College of Journalism (http://bbcjournalism.oup.com) is distributed outside the UK by Oxford University Press.

Media information

For any media inquiries in North/Central/South America, or for press access, please contact:

Purdy
Director of Publicity
Oxford University Press USA
212.726.6032 / [email protected]

For UK and rest of world media enquiries, or press access, contact:

Gabby Fletcher
Oxford University Press UK
[email protected]

Access and subscription information

The site is freely available to UK residents but commercialized outside the UK. This is in line with BBC policy for other online services. UK residents fund the BBC via a license fee. Commercialization outside the UK helps the BBC invest in content while keeping the license fee as low as possible.

About the BBC College of Journalism:

The BBC College of Journalism  <<NB we should always refer to College of Journalism in full, not acronyms>> is part of the BBC Academy, the BBC's centre for training and development.   The College of Journalism was established in 2006 with the mission of overseeing all training for BBC journalists throughout the world. To accomplish their goal, the BBC launched a companion website on its intranet in 2007 and used it as a way to distribute to BBC journalists the training materials designed and developed by the College of Journalism . Recognizing the inherent wealth of information conveyed by the material and the value that journalism students and journalists worldwide would gain from access to the site, the BBC has made the College of Journalism available to subscribers throughout the world.

About Oxford University Press:

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. OUP is the world's largest university press with the widest global presence. It currently publishes more than 6,000 new publications a year, has offices in around fifty countries, and employs more than 5,400 people worldwide. It has become familiar to millions through a diverse publishing programme that includes scholarly works in all academic disciplines, bibles, music, school and college textbooks, children's books, materials for teaching English as a foreign language, business books, dictionaries & online reference products, and academic journals.

SOURCE Oxford University Press