is a box full of enriching surprises for anyone interested in journalism. Officially, the College of Journalism, part of the BBC Academy, oversees training for the BBC’s entire editorial staff. This website focuses on best practice in core editorial skills, and offers an overview of specialist areas as well as legal and ethical issues. It is a site about BBC journalism for BBC journalists, but is available to everyone.
Some of their best work is freely available in the web and in YouTube and can also be followed on Twitter. When it was established, in 2005, Richard Sambrook wrote for Nieman Reports:
The BBC is establishing a College of Journalism to raise and support editorial standards. All journalistic staff in the BBC will be given a minimum level of training each year, and in the future the completion of required training will be seen as integral to promotion. The college will have an annual budget of $15 million and be based within the BBC’s current offices in London. In addition to the core journalistic craft and production skills, which have been the mainstay of journalist training in recent years, the College of Journalism will also focus on ethics and values and building knowledge on key themes and issues, such as Europe and the Middle East. The college will be fully operational in 2006, but the enhanced training is already underway. So far, 10,000 staffers have completed an online editorial policy course (the biggest BBC interactive training initiative yet), and 8,000 staff members have attended workshops on sources and attribution. The college will work in partnership with other journalism training institutions and news organizations. If the BBC wants to broadcast world-class journalism, it must offer its staff world-class training.
In its 2005 Winter issue, Nieman Reports includes 15 posts on Citizen Journalism and the BBC’s new project: