For the past couple of months, I have tried to track down – via phone and email – one of the social media editors at BBC’s London headquarters and its Washington bureau.

With no luck. Except for a promise email from the London social media editor that she will respond shortly.

So I decided to change my strategy and talk to a writer, instead.

That’s how I met Daniel Nasaw. He writes for the BBC’s Washington bureau and was kind enough to spare 10 minutes of his time to respond to some of my questions.

He wasn’t able to speak to the future of financial and editorial positioning of the company, but shared some wisdom on the skills journalists ought to have in order to better position themselves for the profession.

“It helps to be very, very, very comfortable with the Internet,” he said. “You have to know how to do newsgathering with social media.”

Advice number one – social media fluency. Reporting, promoting, sharing and participating.

“You need to know how to work with Twitter and Facebook and how to promote your stories online through social media,” he said.

Advice number two – think multimedia.

“You have to be able to work and think how could I use info graphics and multimedia in the story,” he said.

With the increased need to make stories interactive, Nasaw said the challenge in today’s “crowded media landscape” is “finding a good story that people would want to read.”

And see. And play. And share. And comment on.

Advice number three – strive to be the best in one aspect of newsgathering.

Writing is Nasaw’s forte, he said.

“You can’t do everything well,” he said.

But, in the profession shaped by the new media, it is no longer a matter of how well one aspect of newsgathering is done, but to what extent are journalists willing to keep learning with the growth of new media.

Today, everybody is talking about timelines. On Twitter. And on Facebook. About the new Facebook timeline feature.

But timelines – in addition to serving a social media purpose – come very handy for journalists.

Interactive timelines might be the user-friendliest multimedia tool. When you think about it, they – in essence – capture the nature of journalism: factual summary of major events.  Either by tracing the history of major stories or documenting the time of major events (especially useful for stories with major developments).

BBC Online does both – (somewhat) interactively.

The first example of timelines BBC Online uses is the text-only factual timeline. It lists the factual information by year or date. In addition to the mostly-text timeline, there is always an added visual component. To break all that text apart.

Source: BBC Online

While visuals add to the timeline, I think that the above example shows an inefficient application of timelines because it includes too much information.

The timeline of the Iraq war ending is much more effective in delivering key information. First, it’s highly interactive. The addition of video, images and movement make the factual information vibrant and create a multimedia phenomenon. Second, the information is condensed and relevant.

Source: BBC Online

Interactive timelines – with embedded video and graphic images – have become an important journalistic tool. A visually appealing way to package – and deliver – information.

In the past couple of months, I wrote about the BBC’s new design language, its use of social media and all the other topics that are commonly a part of the new media debate.

One side propagating the benefits of infusing technological advances into the way we gather, report and receive information. And the other, spending all the time rebuffing those claims.

We all heard it.

So, I decided to switch my direction and write about one of the most creative segments on the broadcaster’s website.

Just write about the art of visual storytelling.

It’s BBC’s Picture This segment – a collection of natural sound packages, edited in the sequence of video, still images and music.

Source: BBC Online

The natural sound package is one of the most challenging features to achieve in visual storytelling because it lacks reporter narration.

It’s kind of like a story that tells itself.

Thus, choosing a strong character – one who has a visual story that would speak for itself and knows how to tell that story – is the daunting part.

Actually, daunting part number one.

Filming in sequence (wide, medium, tight, and extra tight shots) and filming from versatile angles is the daunting part number two. It’s very important to have enough cover video because there is no room for reporter stand-ups.

For example, this story of a cartoonist who re-creates the bully phenomenon through a picture book shows “natural packaging” at its best.

Source: BBC Online

The natural sound package is one of the most effective forms of storytelling. The overlay of character narration, natural sound and music along with strong visuals are the driving elements of natural sound packages.

They bring it to life. And make the story seem, well, natural.

BBC Internet Blog describes the organization’s nine-word design philosophy as “modern British, current, authentic,compelling, distinctive, pioneering, joined-up, universal and best.” This philosophy has been applied to the website’s new design introduced in February 2010. The new project design – the so called Global Visual Language 2.0 – brought a cleaner, more contemporary look to the news organization with an underlying grid, an embedded media player, new font types and a whole set of new icons.

The GVL project came as a result of a collaboration between BBC’s design team and Research Studios Graphic Designer Neville Brody, who helped design the new typography and iconography for the broadcaster.

BBC’s Head of Design and User Experience Bronwyn van der Merwe wrote on BBC Internet Blog that BBC aimed to create “a world-class design standard,” which was still authentic enough. Solely BBC’s.

“We wanted to find the soul of the BBC,” he wrote. “We wanted something distinctive and recognisable; we wanted drama. We knew whatever we created needed to be truly cross-platform and that we needed to simplify our user journeys.”

The most recognizable changes are the underlying grid, the more dramatic typography and iconography on the site and the embedded media player.

The Grid

BBC’s over-a-year-old design features an underlying grid based on 31 sixteen-pixel columns with two left hand columns that can be split into four. The grid also has one significantly wider right hand column, primarily used for ads that appear on international version of the site.

Source: BBC Internet Blog

In addition to the 16-pixel vertical grid, the site has created an 8-pixel baseline grid for vertical and horizontal alignment of elements on a page.

Source: BBC Internet Blog

Typography and Iconography

Along with the Gill Sans typeface that the broadcaster began with in 1997, the BBC design team and Brody introduced bold Helvetica and Arial font types that are today used for typography over the images and videos to create a more dramatic effect.

Source: BBC Online

With the new design came a whole new box of icons too. The icons – pictured below – have now become recognizable images of BBC, virtually found on each BBC page.

Source: BBC Internet Blog

Embedded Media Player

But, perhaps the coolest and most eye-catching feature – and one that shows the difference between what van der Merwe calls “multi media” and “multimedia” is the embedded media player. It not only gives BBC an opportunity to use video in place of an image as a visual for a text story with a large headline over the video, but its design is cutting-edge and strikingly consistent throughout all BBC pages. Unifying the visual with the text, the embedded media player creates a consolidated multimedia “marriage.”

Source: BBC Online

Conclusion

The introduction of GVL moved BBC’s online component toward a cleaner and more functional design and a more competitive, cutting-edge news website. From the looks of it, in little over a year ago, BBC found its soul.

BBC’s navigation and website design came a long way. Three years ago, its digital services – particularly the website design and navigation features – were lagging behind the world’s leading news organizations. For example, in 2008, The New York Times already had a central navigation system in place on its website and the newspaper’s online component saw a few changes since.

Source: The Way Back Machine of The New York Times website, Jan. 12, 2008.

At that time – as seen from the screen shot below – BBC was still using the left-hand user navigation system, resembling more a personal blog than a professional news organization with a global audience. Users could browse key stories and categories from the left-hand navigation system, but at the same time search the website content from a central “Search” tab. It was a redundant attempt to make users search for BBC content. By any means.

Source: The Way Back Machine of BBC website, Jan. 14, 2008.

But, in February 2010, BBC introduced a Global Visual Language 2.0 “with the aim of unifying the visual and interaction design of bbc.co.uk and the mobile website,” its website stated. With the introduction of a cleaner design, came the single central navigation system across the site that replaced the left-hand user navigation.

Source: BBC Online

Today – with a simpler, user-friendly, navigation system – users are able to flag key stories and sections quicker. In her comparative analysis of the BBC News vs. The Guardian, Rebecca Craft contends that “the BBC mainly uses structural and associative links with related pages to other BBC articles and structural links navigate users to different areas on the website.”

Thousands of examples prove that. The weekend’s top story on the violent clashes between the protesters and the police in Cairo’s Tahrir Square is one of them.

The associative links – which offer related content to the story – are placed on the right-hand side from the main text story:

Source: BBC Online

The website’s placement of structural links – which navigate users to “different areas of the website,” is different. Structural links are placed next to the latest video report on the main story:

Source: BBC Online

Since its introduction of a new website design last year, BBC has made a tremendous progress toward adapting to the online expectations of the digital audience. The organization managed to create a local and global branding and navigation system, unifying the look of the website and driving millions of new users online.

Source: BBC Internet Blog

An “A” for the new simple, central navigation system. And a tip of the hat for BBC’s user retention efforts by making them navigate within the website’s content.

In concert with what most news organizations use social media for today, BBC Online is primarily using Facebook and Twitter to post headlines and market the stories its staff produced. What we commonly see on Twitter is that the news organizations use hashtags for major stories (such as #Eurozone, #Greece) to promote their work, post headlines through compressed links and re-tweet their staff’s latest reports.

BBC Breaking News Twitter account does all three very well. Here are the examples that show that:

1. BBC Breaking News converses with the users through hashtags, which help drive traffic to the site and increase the chance of an accumulated number of followers.

Source: BBC Breaking Twitter account

2. This is an example of how BBC Breaking News uses Twitter to post headlines.

Source: BBC Breaking Twitter account

3. The third example shows the communication between the news organization and its staff by using Twitter’s re-tweet feature.

Source: BBC Breaking Twitter account

Because of its global outreach, BBC has numerous Twitter accounts, including BBC News, BBC World, BBC Sport etc. and most of them use Twitter for the reasons listed above. However, the need to use Twitter as an engagement tool between the organization and the users is becoming increasingly important. In his Advice for editors on becoming conversational on Twitter, Steve Buttry, the director of Community Engagement and Social Media at Journal Register Co., says that journalists and editors need to use Twitter to “converse with the community” and respond to their tweets daily. This kind of engagement and the “conversation with the community” culture hasn’t been present on most of BBC’s Twitter accounts.

The organization’s Facebook accounts have seen much more interactivity, which mostly comes from user comments. Since Facebook posts can be longer and allow for more space and visuals, BBC News Facebook page traditionally includes a headline, a link to the story and an image.

Source: BBC News Facebook account

But the user interactivity is what really drives the organization’s Facebook pages. Users not only use BBC pages to share their view on an issue discussed, but also engage in debates with other users.

Source: BBC News Facebook account

The problem is that most of the time, BBC is silent in the discussion. The news organization is putting forth the story. Users are putting forth the debate. Like Twitter, Facebook is an excellent social media tool that allows for meaningful conversations in which everyone should be involved, including the news organization that creates the debate in the first place.

For users who want to stay out of the debate on BBC’s Facebook and Twitter accounts and be the channel for sharing BBC’s reports instead, BBC Online gives them the opportunity to do so. Each story on BBC Online involves a sharing element:

Source: BBC Online

While still lacking interactivity and engagement, this element is a great marketing tool. But this time users do the promoting.

We have come full circle. Regardless of who does the promoting of stories – the organization or its users – the bottom line is that social media tools offer much more than a marketing opportunity. They allow for high-end interactivity and a virtual space for conversations in which both the user community and the organization should be a part of.

BBC Online involves all of the journalism interactive elements on its website. From podcasts and magazine features to academic collaboration and programs that allow the “World [to] Have [Their] Say,” BBC strives to be where the innovation and digitalization are leading us.

However, the distribution and use of these elements varies significantly in the special reports packages and the day-to-day news stories.

BBC’s special reports page offers packages infused with interactivity and high-end journalism, demonstrating how well different elements can tell the same story. Take the South Sudan independence story as an example. Not only does the story include photos, graphics, broadcast features, maps, audio slideshows, and timelines, but it does it in an innovative, digital and futuristic way. And there is no better example that shows that than this panoramic 360 photo, which allows the user to slide the picture and with the click of the mouse hear the audio of the person whose face is outlined with a square in the photo. One photo infused with audio elements tells the story of the pictured Southern Sudanese men and their return to their village.

The day-to-day news stories have a different kind of coherence and employ more common journalistic features to tell the story.

For example, most of the BBC’s daily news coverage – like the one on Australian Airline Qantas flight grounding published today – is structured coherently with the following common elements: a text story about the issue written in the inverted-pyramid style; a video package of the report or a video element related to the story; a sidebar of “Related Stories”; a sidebar analysis of the reporter on the scene or an opinion columnist; a bulleted list that relates to the story; a brief bulleted history of the issue; a related slideshow of images; and either an invitation for users to share their experience or a comment section.

The divide in the elements used for special reports and daily news works on many levels. It creates a distinction between the two forms of storytelling while it displays cohesion throughout both of these separate pages. Still, I think daily news coverage would benefit tremendously from the inclusion of a graphic here and there and an occasional “panoramic 360 photo” element. All stories – daily and long form alike – have a different angle when viewed from different sides. A story is like an angled art structure that looks different depending on the side from which it’s being viewed. So the tools available to tell any story should reflect that diversity.

While the death of Col. Muammar Gaddafi has been making BBC’s headlines all week, creating different angles to the central story through images, text, maps and graphs, it was far from the best multimedia stories the news giant has produced.

The earthquake in Japan was a different kind of a story, and BBC presented it extremely well in multimedia. In a webpage dedicated solely to all the elements of the story, BBC has shown a tremendous diversity in a way a natural disaster of an enormous magnitude could be covered. Name the angle. They presented it. From nuclear, political and health standpoints to emergency survival tips, earthquake measurements and people affected, it had it all.

One of the best features of the Japan earthquake special was a highly interactive video map that shows the day after the earthquake. Video elements were embedded in the map and whole set up just seemed to work perfectly. Users were able to view the horrendous images of destruction, but at the same time grasp the geographical location of the coastal towns affected.

A digital tremor timeline was another element that enhanced the story. It’s a video graphic that shows the spread, size and frequency of earthquakes in Japan. But, the devastation of the earthquake stretched far beyond from a natural disaster. The explosion and release of the radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi plant led to one of the worst nuclear accidents in history. BBC’s multimedia presentation on the events that unfolded at Fukushima Daiichi plant after it was hit by the tsunami and earthquake provided thorough explanation in a very simple way all people could understand. The illustrations told the story behind the complex concept of the works of nuclear reactors. We were able to understand how they operate, what happens when their safety systems fail and how the problem could be solved.

However, people affected constitute the most important element of any story. And particularly the story of the Japan’s earthquake. Even though the features about the people are not highly interactive, they are the heart of the piece. They move us, inspire us and make us comprehend the power of the nature. How tiny we become in a face of a natural disaster and a historical nuclear accident. These stories all represent our true magnitude.

As one of the leading world’s news organizations, BBC’s online service offers high-quality content, trusted information and an opportunity for all of us to become more knowledgeable on the issues that shape the news agenda.

BBC’s online arm makes a very good use of the interactive new-media platform by presenting different elements (including text, video, photos, brief data summaries, text boxes from the reporters at the scene, and hyperlinks to relevant information on the story) for almost each of their stories. For example, their approach to the Occupy Wall Street protest story – which has spread globally and made headlines throughout the week – was well presented. In addition to the traditional text story, the latest video element of the protesters opened the piece and in the middle of the page, in an isolated text box, the reporter at the scene wrote about the latest developments.  As with all of their other stories – in an effort to make the piece more interactive and participatory – the following statement was written at the end of the article: “Are you taking part in the Occupy Wall Street movement? What do you think about the protesters? Send us your comments and experiences.” All you have to do is provide your information, write in your opinion and click Send. Since the Occupy Wall Street story reached global proportions, this latest text story offers users the chance to visit the Related Stories page that links to a magazine piece about the deferred American Dream , a slideshow of images capturing the clash between the public and the authorities and the The start of something new? editorial written by BBC’s North America Editor Mark Mardell.

However, despite being so in sync with the demands of the new-media platform, their coverage of the global protests defying the culture of corporate greed, money and self-sufficiency, lacked just a bit more interactivity. It is no longer enough to engage the users with a question at the end of the article, inviting them to send their comments and share their experience on the issue. News organizations need to provide the “sharing” features whenever they can in all possible formats available so that people could choose the way to contribute. But, at the same time media need to facilitate the “sharing features” so that the public contribution advances the story in such a way that the story still preserves its original news value. The overall visual presentation of the Occupy Wall Street story – coherent throughout the domestic coverage in New York City  and the global coverage in Rome over the weekend – was short on graphics and interactive videos that could describe the trend of the “We are the 99 percent” movement. For example, instead of the Economic protests data box that provided the historical developments of the people’s protest throughout the world, the web editors could have presented the same information in an interactive graphics format with Twitter, Facebook and YouTube features for users to share, tweet and post on their social media sites. For the social media generation, the need for the visual comprehension of data is enormous. And The New York Times has seen that need. This interactive graphics of the Occupy Wall Street protest serves as a clear indication.

While the BBC has evolved into a leading online news organization and has adapted extremely well to the demands of the new era, the need to incorporate more interactive and graphic elements could only further improve their online service.

From its beginnings in 1922 to present, BBC has grown to become one of the largest broadcasting organizations in the world. The mission of this public service broadcaster “is to enrich people’s lives with programmes that inform, educate and entertain,” its website states. In its nearly 90-year-old history, it has done so through various programs, voices and platforms.

The BBC story began with the radio broadcasts. They became the channel of communication between the public and the British monarchy and the driving information feed during the World War II. BBC’s following decades belonged to television. As the transition to color television and pictures of the man on the moon fascinated the world, their radio service adopted a new form of comedy, entertainment and pop music. In the mid ’90s, BBC enters the digital age. In 1995, BBC launches Digital Audio Broadcasting and two years later, begins airing news 24/7. The evolution of social media sites and the daily eruption of new technologies forced news organizations to rethink and redefine their strategies of attracting and keeping their audiences. In addition to their interactive website BBC Online, BBC iPlayer – a service that enabled U.K. viewers to download and catch up on more than 250 programs screened in the previous seven days – was one of BBC’s responses. BBC Mobile and the BBC Channel on YouTube followed.

Today this worldwide public service broadcaster – which was established by a Royal Charter and is funded by the license fee paid by the U.K. households – states on its website that it “uses the income from the license fee to provide services including eight national TV channels plus regional programming, 10 national radio stations, 40 local radio stations and an extensive website.” Its BBC World Service – which provides radio, TV and online information and content in 32 languages around the world – is funded by a government grant. BBC Worldwide, on the other hand is BBC’s commercial entity, and its profits are used for investment in new BBC programs and services.

BBC’s audience information report between January and March 2011 shows envious numbers with “97 percent of U.K. adults who consume at least 15 minutes of a BBC service in an average week and spend 19 hours a week on average with the BBC.”Yet, challenges for refocusing BBC’s online component and changing the way the content is consumed certainly exist.

BBC’s Director-General Mark Thompson saw those challenges. In 2009, he ordered a review of the BBC strategy, looking at the ways the BBC could adapt to the changing media landscape and serve its audience in an online environment.

One of the challenges was to find a way to remain an integral part of the integrated, social and shared changing online environment. Out of the online news websites that I access on a daily basis, BBC Online is one of my favorites because it is transparent, creative, user-friendly and highly- interactive. From their annual financial reports to their executive and senior staff listings and salary figures, BBC offers a level of transparency and independence its audiences expect in concert with its independent and objective journalism it serves. Only the company’s About Us page houses multiple websites within. From those that show the company’s interactive and hybrid historical timeline and the archived gallery of photos to a separate website for users to share their memories about BBC and participate in the digital contribution of the content, it is a website that responds exactly in the direction the digital era demands.

And that is just their About Us page.