The Radio 4 Blog Feed

Hugh Sykes with his camera in Tahrir Square

2011-02-13T22:01:48+00:00

Radio 4 reporter Hugh Sykes is in Egypt. He presented the Cairo end of today's extended The World This Weekend and he's been providing reports for Broadcasting House, PM, From Our Own Correspondent and many other programmes and bulletins while he's been there. If you're a regular listener you'll know that his speciality is intimate, humane conversations with ordinary people in the troubled places he visits.

If you're a regular reader of the PM blog you'll also be familiar with his photographs. He carries a camera on all his assignments and, during today's The World This Weekend, he mentioned the latest batch from Tahrir Square. So I rushed off an email to Hugh, asking if I might have some for the blog and he emailed me these. They were all taken "in and around Tahrir Square" in the last twenty-four hours.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

Listen to Hugh's The World This Weekend (co-presented with Shaun Ley) and to his contribution to this week's From Our Own Correspondent on the Radio 4 web site.
Hugh has made dozens of contributions to the PM blog, many of which make use of his photographs.
In this short video, on the From Our Own Correspondent web site, Hugh discusses his career and methods.

Justin Webb on his first Today appearance

2009-08-27T12:47:29+00:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8223000/8223750.stm

Justin Webb, until recently the BBC's North America Editor, arrived in the Today studio this morning for his first appearance as a permanent presenter of the programme (he's filled in once or twice in the past). We asked Chris Vallance to talk to Justin - exclusively for the Radio 4 blog - about his first appearance and about the benefits of working with John Humphrys.

Chris started by asking how it had gone:

As is customary, John and Justin reviewed the programme immediately after transmission. Watch their review here and listen to the programme again here.
Justin will read the My News section of iPM to be broadcast this Saturday at 1730 (subscribe to the iPM podcast).
Chris Vallance recorded an interview with a game theorist and an Archers scriptwriter for the blog back in April.
The Guardian reviewed Justin's first appearance and the Twittersphere enjoyed his use of the word 'recrudescence' in an item about football hooligans.
For another item - about encouraging people to cycle to work - Justin took to the road.

Sarah Mukherjee's week

2009-08-21T14:33:39+00:00

There are many advantages to working in August.

True, while many of our colleagues (and listeners) are battling with dilemmas like "white or red?", "pool or beach?" and "if I eat anything else for breakfast, will I still be able to get into my swimsuit?", I am trawling through websites, specialist journals and my contacts (those who are left at work, anyway) to see what stories they may have that we can get on air.

But while London can be, like any big conurbation, rather oppressive in hazy, sticky summer days, you can at least get a seat on the train, the queue for coffee is mercifully short, and anything story you turn your hand to will have an excellent chance of getting on.

I've been a broadcast journalist for twenty years now, and every year it's the same. There is often, sadly, one overwhelming story that happens in August - the death of the Princess of Wales, or the murder or the two little girls from Soham (both of which I covered).

But lower down the running order, there's an interesting shift in editorial standards that takes place at about the end of July. A gradual descent downwards, hurtling towards the bottom of the barrel at about this point in the summer. Part of the job of a specialist correspondent is to advise the outlets we serve about the merits of a story. But no-one wants to hear "we've done it before" at this time of year - there are still hours of airtime to fill, and not a lot with which to fill it.

But if you manage to dodge the pleading emails from output editors, August can be a fantastic time to prepare for the big stories later in the year. So much of modern day journalism can feel like a bit of a hamster wheel. Within a day you must take calls and read emails from contacts, mobilise resources, book crews, check equipment (when I do radio slots for the Today programme it's me and a satellite dish, no back up, so it's vital to make sure it's working before you leave), talk to editors, and research and turn around a story at lightning speed. So the chance to lift your gaze towards the horizon at quiet times is enormously helpful.

Yesterday, I and producer Nora Dennehy took a trip up to Sandy in Bedfordshire, to the headquarters of the RSPB, to talk to their experts about illegal bird hunting, here and in the EU, and about the effectiveness - or lack of it - of the European legislation designed to stop the practise.

Much of our planning time is now being devoted to a big UN meeting in December in Copenhagen, at which - it's hoped - there will be a global deal to reduce in the future the carbon dioxide emissions that the vast majority of scientists believe are causing climate change.

My big concern is how we are going to cover a story that involves lots of people talking impenetrably to each other in a large conference hall, and cover it in a way that makes it relevant to our listeners, explains what is going on and considers the difference it could make to us all. Already there are some very highly placed people I've been talking to who think such a deal is too much to ask in the time available - so we already have to ask the question: what happens then?

One of our ideas it to take a van that runs on chip fat around the UK to visit some low-carbon projects and schemes that are actually up and running. It's obviously a big commitment, financially and logistically, for the BBC, so we've been talking this week within the department about how viable it would be.

But before I think about covering talks designed to save the planet, I need to check out a story about a UK-wide early conker harvest, and conker-killing beetles that seem to be travelling by car. August may always be quiet, but the variety of stories that cross your desk as environment correspondent never ceases to surprise me!

Sarah Mukherjee is BBC environment correspondent.

Picture of a conker by Nick Thompson. Used under licence.