One of the pioneers of BBC News Online, David Brewer, emphasised the critical role of strong, independent and sustainable news operations in emerging democracies, when he spoke at the IofC centre in London

1030David Brewer, one of the pioneers of BBC News Online (http://news.bbc.co.uk), emphasised the critical role of strong, independent and sustainable news operations in emerging democracies, when he spoke at the IofC centre in London, 9 March.

Newspapers, TV, radio and news websites in emerging democracies could ‘lead the way with crisp, clear editorial offerings that cut the clutter and deliver the basics to an audience hungry for impartial, balanced coverage,’ he said. ‘Many are forced to consider radical production solutions because of the political and economic positions they find themselves in. Might the large news organisations look on with envy at how much can be done with so little?’ He was giving a Greencoat Forum lecture on ‘Building independent media in developing democracies’.

Brewer emphasised the role that news websites could play in keeping small independent papers free from the threat of closure by hostile governments, because websites raised papers’ international profiles and therefore made them ‘hard to silence’. ‘Independent media challenge the executive and promote transparency,’ he said. Yet simple websites were cheap to run, requiring only one or two staff.

Brewer was one of four journalists who set up and launched BBC News Online in 1997. The BBC site is now one of the world’s leading news websites. He became Managing Editor, taking responsibility for staffing and editorial issues. From 2000 he was Managing Editor of CNN.com (http://edition.cnn.com) for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, responsible for setting up the first global versions of CNN outside Atlanta, Georgia. In 2001 he was asked to build CNN Arabic (http://arabic.cnn.com), in Dubai. The site was planned in 2001, just months before the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and was launched in January 2002.

Brewer left CNN in order to ‘help build independent and sustainable news operations’ because, he said, ‘I knew I could help them. I like building solutions and they needed support, guidance and expertise’. As an independent consultant (http://www.mediaideas.co.uk) he now acts as a part-time editorial advisor for the Media Development Loan Fund (http://www.mdlf.org). This assists media in emerging democracies through low interest loans to those unable to find affordable loans locally or denied advertising through political pressure. His work takes him from the Balkans to Asia and Central America. He also assists a BBC charity, the World Service Trust (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/trust), which trains media operations worldwide.

Brewer emphasised that sustainability was key for independent media. ‘Sustainability is all about media businesses that stand on their own feet, not only editorially but also financially,’ he said. ‘There is no point in offering expensive solutions that drain resources and damage the core business. All solutions have to be targeted at the client’s financial position and tailored so that the media operation can continue to grow.’ His approach to editors, he said, was to pose the questions, ‘What do you stand for? What do you say that no one else is saying?’ and then to help them to be more cost effective in achieving their goals.

Last summer, in Belgrade's ‘Centre for Cultural Decontamination’ (http://www.czkd.org.yu), for instance, 20 journalists from across the Balkans had gathered for a two-day seminar he conducted on how to build sustainable independent media, in a region that had been starved of free speech for so long. (http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=39878)

During the Milosovic era, the centre—set up to ‘transform the social atmosphere that has been contaminated by orchestrated nationalism, hatred, and destruction’—had been an oasis for freedom of speech and thought, where artists and writers had gathered to plan for a post-conflict future.

The seminar aimed to try to ensure that the events that followed the break-up of the former Yugoslavia would never happen again. The journalists represented television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and news agencies, and spanned the so-called ‘ethnic divide’. All had witnessed events that make transition to normality difficult to cope with.

In the packed two days, they examined their editorial positions, identified core news strengths, streamlined content offerings, and explored how to make their businesses economically sustainable. They discovered how editorial discipline and a ‘multiplatform’ writing style could enable a weekly magazine on the borders of Macedonia and Albania to produce an online version for almost no extra cost. A TV and radio station found a way to create ‘a more dynamic web offering, by focusing on its unique content and cutting the clutter’. And website editors had realised that the strength of their stories lay in ‘enhancing understanding’ in the community.

‘They emerged having found out how to create new products from existing workflows using fewer resources and reaching a wider audience,’ Brewer said.

At one news organisation he had observed that journalists were duplicating their efforts between the news, sports, business and entertainment desks. He was able to make editorial and cost savings simply by recommending ‘moving a few desks around’ so that journalists shared information better and ‘breathed the same air’ when major news stories broke. They took immediate action and he was encouraged by people who were keen to ‘immediately implement what you recommend’. It lead to a faster turn around of news stories, increased productivity, reduced ‘reversioning’ of stories, and the ability to create new revenue-generating products.

Brewer, who also lectures in journalism at the University of Westminster, paid tribute to the ‘brave journalists in all these countries’. He warned that there was a need, especially with websites that have a global reach, to be aware of cultural sensitivities. ‘What is appropriate in the West may not be appropriate elsewhere on grounds of taste or decency or some other local issue,’ he said. ‘Only those who are sensitive to this will be in a position to offer meaningful help to those news operations as they attempt to become independent and sustainable.’

Michael Smith