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Posted on Friday, 25 January 2008 at 06:55

Where Have All The Correspondents Gone?

Ever wondered how many overseas correspondents the BBC has, and where they all are?

I've just spent my last two night shifts messing around with the Google Maps API to create the BBC Correspondents Map. It's in a constant state of production, as correspondents move around the world at an alarming speed as stories happen or are expected to happen; also, as it's been made on night shifts while my brain is (also) in a permanent state of production, there's bound to be some I've missed.

I'm also going to add a list of correspondents to make them easier to find, although this requires me to database it all up (if that can be used as a verb?)

Correspondents with '(WS)' after their name are employed by the World Service, and therefore are not financed by the license fee; however, they can be used by BBC News should the need to have someone in that location arise, with extra payment of course. Also, there's no distinction (yet...) on the map between correspondents (license fee-funded and paid a monthly salary), stringers (on a BBC contract but only paid per on-air appearance, who often get paid more than staff if something big happens in their area!) and freelancers (who may be employed by another media organisation but can also report for the BBC, or just someone who is available to report if required).

Let me know your thoughts, any errors you spot or any improvements you can think of...

16 Comments:

At 25 January 2008 09:37 , Simon Dickson said...: A really nice piece of work, Stuart - but it really needs to distinguish between 'fulltimers' and 'stringers'. Otherwise my instinctive reaction is 'who the hell are all these people, and why am I paying them when I've never ever heard them?'
At 29 January 2008 14:08 , Stuart Pinfold said...: ...and, with the release of the new version today, there's now a distinction between stringers and correspondents.
At 31 January 2008 12:42 , Anonymous said...: Very impressive

Nice to also add links to photos and cvs of the reporters

Good job and leads me to some ideas for my own job
At 31 January 2008 13:13 , Anonymous said...: Looks really good, but isn't there a bureau in Jerusalem? Also, if you really want to go all out shouldn't you include World Service staff/offices?
At 31 January 2008 22:42 , hakan tuncel said...: Nice and useful. One small problem; when viewed in firefox, it doesn't display the bottom black background rendering the text invisible.
At 01 February 2008 09:55 , Stuart Pinfold said...: Anonymous (1): Photos (where available) will be added to the next version of the map, already in development on a test server.

Anonymous (2): 'Bureaux' in this case means that London has a direct link to that location, and that all three news operations - radio, TV and Online - can be performed from there without anybody doing anything extra. In the case of all the bureaux on this map, technicians in London can pick up audio and visual channels directly from the location without anybody having to dial anything up or switch anything extra on. In addition, journalists at the location are able to write and publish web articles without requiring any extra assistance from London. For this map, that is what is defined as a bureau.

Anonymous (2): World Service staff are not (yet) included, although this is something I am looking into, as long as this doesn't swamp the map in high news areas such as the middle-east.

Hakan: Now fixed. The problem was this map was developed and tested entirely on BBC computers, where we are restricted to Internet Explorer 6. Now I'm on a day off and have access to Firefox, I could see where the problems were and have fixed them, although this has meant moving the black bar to the top of the page instead of the bottom.
At 01 February 2008 19:36 , Jess Lee said...: Great mashup! The Google Maps team wrote a post about you at
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2008/02/all-news-thats-fit-to-map.html
At 02 February 2008 02:32 , Connor Walsh said...: Excellent work!

I can imagine keeping track of stringers would be tough, by nature. I think Guy Delauney might be one on Cambodia?
I also thought Vaudine England in Hong Kong and Caroline Gluck were stringers rather than correspondents… but don't quote me on any of it!

Great job though, really cool.
At 03 February 2008 10:28 , Anonymous said...: Very nice, Stuart. One suggestion: it would be cute if when hovering over an icon for a correspondent on the map, a tool-tips box could appear with his or her name. Not as an alternative to being able to click through, but as a quick ID.

I've described your mash-up to the KIDMM e-community (Knowledge, Information, Data and Metadata Management) within the British Computer Society. That includes members of the BCS Geospatial group, who are very interested in mash-ups of this kind.

Good work!

- Conrad Taylor
At 05 February 2008 12:27 , Craig said...: Just wanted to point out that the pop-up bubbles for correspondents in Israel say "Isreal". Really interesting to see where they all are - great job!
At 06 February 2008 10:05 , Will said...: The popups arent always visible, e.g. Washington, USA: click on the people's names, and the photo is too far down to see.

How did you automatically get the photos?
At 06 February 2008 10:42 , Stuart Pinfold said...: Connor: You're right, and Guy de Launey, Caroline Gluck and Vaudine England are now officially stringers!

Anonymous (3): I think that would slow the loading of the map down so much that it wouldn't be justified. However, I'm considering adding a tool-tip with the location, especially useful in crowded areas such as around Israel and Jerusalem.

Craig: Thanks for pointing out the typo. Now fixed.

Will: There may be a problem viewing at the moment in Firefox. The reason is that it's all been developed on BBC computers, which are stuck on Internet Explorer 6, with no access to install or use any other browser! However, this will be fixed when I can develop the map at home with access to Firefox. For the moment I've added a little alert when the map loads warning Firefox users they may see things incorrectly.
At 01 April 2008 10:33 , Pamela said...: This is, or could be, really really useful to us at International Filming Advice - particularly the correspondents/stringers who we often would like to make contact with but can't find through the BBC global or the IOD database...but how do we contact the stringers who are not listed on the IOD database or global address list? Any possibility of getting links to email addresses or TN's from the map/list?

Are you keeping this updated?
At 04 April 2008 22:24 , Stuart Pinfold said...: Pamela, if you email me on stuart.pinfold@bbc.co.uk, I can give you a more detailed response to your question.
At 12 June 2008 11:34 , Anonymous said...: Hi stuart,

Is this map updated as from today?

Juliette
At 24 June 2008 12:13 , Stuart Pinfold said...: Hi Juliette,

The map is reviewed about every month, and any updates, deletions or additions all happen at once.

This month's update has been completed this morning, so everything should be smack-bang up-to-date as of the time of this posting!

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The views expressed throughout this blog are my personal views, and not those of either the BBC, BBC News, Trafficlink or any other organisations I work for, or quote or reference in blog posts. This blog is not run for profit, and no payment or payment in kind is accepted for blog posts.

About the Blog

I work across the radio industry as a freelancer.

My main work now comes from the BBC's News Traffic Unit. It's not what's happening on the M1 southbound, but the first port of call for correspondents around the UK and world ready to file a story ('despatch') to anyone from the World Service to News 24, the Asian Network to BBC1 television bulletins, Radio 1 Newsbeat to The Today Programme.

I also work at BBC Three Counties Radio, Radio Five Live and Trafficlink, the company who supply traffic and travel news to BBC and commercial radio stations.

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