Newsnig8t

The blog goes legit!

My official BBC Blog, Idle Scrawl, is now up and running, on Moveable Type, inside the BBC's firewall. Check it out on http://blogs.bbc.co.uk/paulmason/ and tell your friends! Sincere thanks to all those who have linked, trackbacked and commented here - fire away on the new blog! Cheers Paul

I go head to head with a virtual Paxman

Jeremy Paxman and myself (stunningly rendered, left) will make television history by broadcasting part of Newsnight  from within an online multiplayer game called Second Life. Tune in at 2230GMT to see my report on the startling, frightening and inspiring world of MMORPGS - thats massively multiplayer online role playing games, newbie! LOL (etc).

2005: The year oil peaked and the planet roared

Tonight's Newsnight on BBC 2 (2230 GMT) is devoted to the question - was 2005 a tipping point for both the oil supply and climate change. Watch it online live in broadband at www.bbc.co.uk/newsnight.

Blair and Bush: war criminals - or the FDR and Churchill of our age?

There'll be a mock trial of Bush and Blair this Wednesday night at 2230 GMT: the charge - that the Gulf War II allies have broken international law in their conduct during the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Since this is not being hosted by an anarchist website but by the BBC's flagship nightly current affairs programme (I work for it) I imagine this will cause controversy.

End of the London Routemaster

The last ever Routemaster runs today on the London bus route that goes right past my house. The Routemaster is loved by us Londoners for two reasons: a) you can jump on and off between stops, defying the bureaucrats who forbid the drivers to open doors between stops, as there is no door; b) no matter how bad the driver is, he cannot throw you off your feet by braking as there are no brakes. We will never see the like of this vehicle on a truly human scale again. And yes Iknow they are not wheelchair friendly. Why did they not simply redesign them instead of scrapping them. Retro cars are in. Why not retro buses? I am too traumatised tk go on... >>Filed from my P910i

I spark a flame war!

Phew! This site has come a long way from the intricacies of the Doha development round! My piece last night on a web browser called Flock, and the "Web 2.0" movement, has sparked a rare flame war and Newsnight's website is struggling to keep up. We will post as many replies as we can, here.

I get a first look at Flock

I am in Amsterdam getting a demonstration of a new web browser that if you believe the hype is going to change the world. More follows. >>Filed from my P910i

Advance warning...the blog will return

Watch this space. It may take a couple of months but the world's most dynamic broadcasting corporation is now committed, in principle, and reserving its rights, and bearing in mind the incredible technical challenge involved, to relaunching the blog on an official basis. More details to follow, as they emerge.

A balance sheet of the blog

1. A blog is born: We did not so much break the BBC rules when setting up the blog but shimmied through them like Tana Umaga. Having been assigned to cover the protests around Gleneagles I decided to do a "proof of concept" blog and show it to the editor. He liked it, our web editor got it signed off and that was it. Apparently the BBC bosses had just had a big awayday where they decided to stop being clipboard merchants and prioritise innovation, so no-one felt like nixing it. And yet there was nothing that said it should be allowed. As one person put it: "this is outside the BBC universe" - and I thought: that puts it rather well...

Media critics get to work

Thanks to Yesbutnobut for these links to a Mediamatters, a blog which has followed Fox News coverage of the question: how would the London bombs impact the G8 summit. Link 1. Link 2. Link 3. It's worth pointing out that Mediamatters is dedicated to being on the case of Fox journalists, just as BiasedBBC is there to point out the inadequacies of the organisation I work for. There are 95 comments on that site's story on 7/7, which form a kind rolling commentary on Newsnight on the night of the bombings.

The communique, the responses, the row

The G8 Communique has been published (PDF) and Make Poverty History has issued its response: critical but supportive. The World Development Movement response is considerably angrier. Friends of the Earth described it as "talk no action". Paragraph 31 is being welcomed as a move away from aid conditionality. Free healthcare (paragraph 17) is also being seen as a concession by the USA...

Blogging the bombs

Now something strange has happened. The blogosphere and mobile phone mpegs are reporting the bombing, and capturing the zeitgeist in its complex reality, in a different way than the broadcast media - which are all being excellent, by the way. The Guardian Media journos have just rung me to talk about this and we agree it is a phenomenon: seeing mpegs on the BBC 10 O'clock News was just the tip of the iceberg.

Jump straight into the following: a survivor of the Edgware Road bomb recounts the full horror; Letter to the Terrorists picks up the zeitgeist of beer and stoicism; Perfect (one of this blog's regular trackbackers) is on the case, while Yesbutnobut seems to be aggregating bomb blogs. Europhobia picks up a common theme of refusing to be deflected from the G8 agenda, posting pictures of starving African kids, saying:

"23:20 - Nearly time for bed. All I ask is that we don't forget the others who have died today, from whom those ******* terrorists managed to distract our attention."

Sitting at Edinburgh airport yesterday I decided to suspend the blog: while blogging was proving a good way of creating a little ecosphere around my broadcast reports this was something different. But as it turns out the blogosphere has sprung to life around the bombing in a way it really did not around the G8...