From the editor's desktop

Pete Clifton, editor of the BBC News website, wades into the debate on how the site is funded, has a really shoddy stab at being a citizen photographer, and tries a joke few will understand.

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FREE FOR ALL

If you are reading this column from outside the UK, next week there will be a big advert in the right hand column to help fund my time, and you may be asked to pay a subscription. Is that OK with you?

Relax. Just going for the shock intro, but there was certainly a major debate in the postbag this week about people from abroad writing in with criticisms and observations, when the British licence payer is "picking up the tab".

Dean Brown from Stoke-on-Trent, UK observed: "All these people from outside Britain shouldn't be allowed to comment on the positive and negative aspects of the BBC - they don't pay any licence fee!"

Antonia from London rejected the idea of building a cyber wall. "I love to see comments from readers around the globe. They provide an objective and very welcome viewpoint and it's genuinely interesting to hear from them. The Beeb covers news from around the world, not just the backyards and doorsteps of licence payers. Learn to share."

It would certainly be a curious march back in time if we just talked amongst ourselves, and it's worth pondering this debate about funding.

The BBC News site costs around 50p from every £126.50 licence fee. We also receive a significant chunk of our funding from the World Service, which in turn gets "grant in aid" money from the Foreign Office. It may all ultimately come from the taxpayer, but I believe this long-established funding of the World Service to provide reliable, impartial, in-depth news to the world, fostering understanding and debate, is something we should be proud of.

I find the idea of compromising those principles by asking for a subscription from overseas readers extremely uncomfortable. At a stroke we'd be alienating many of those we are striving to reach. Advertising on pages accessed abroad has also been whispered in some quarters from time to time, but to my mind any revenue it brought in would be comfortably eclipsed by the damage it did to the BBC's reputation for clear, uncluttered, impartial, ad-free news.

Serving basic web pages to an international audience is not a particularly expensive business, after all. Providing broadband quality video to an international audience is a much trickier one. Costly, and with rapidly expanding demand, it needs a different model. That is why people overseas are offered narrowband video from the site, with an option to subscribe to broadband through a third party.

But, as ever, I'm very interested to hear your views. The form's at the bottom.

SUB STANDARD

Plenty more e-mails about spelling and grammar on the site, many welcoming the additional subbing team we are putting in place to add extra polish (or introducing polish) to our highest profile reports. I wrote about this last week (you can find old columns, look, over there in the right hand column) and the team starts work on 5 September.

Many of you felt we could make it easier to report a mistake. I'll have a think about this, although every page has a "contact us" link at the bottom, taking you to this page where you can have a pop about just about anything.

Our cause was not helped last week, as many of you pointed out, by the fact that our front page was promoting my column discussing spelling mistakes, and another promotional box, alongside, was promising: "No blue skies. Ex-BBC boss Birt fails to address big braodacasting issues".

It was put right quickly. But no excuses. This was pathetic.

Misspelled sign on Central line

There could always be a job for this rogue typist on the London underground. This week, I proved I could be a (very bad) citizen photographer by capturing this on the Central line in 10inch high electronic ticker type - "PLEAST NOTE! BOND ST OPEN."

Which set me wondering. We could probably have some fun if you turned citizen photographer and sent in a few examples of the worst spelling you have seen around the place - shop windows, pub blackboards, car boot sales etc. You get the idea. Send them to [e-mail] or get more details here. We'll run some here next week.

DESKTOP BICKER

Barrie W from Ontario, Canada (yes, I take comments from beyond Dover) gave me a gentle nudge this week. "Just to remind you that summer is about gone - and we still do not have that wonderful ticker tape? You did say, earlier this year, that it would reappear, better than ever, this summer!! When will we see it?"

Fair point. The problem with talking about any technical project too far in advance is that they are often, well, a bit later than you expect. But the good news is that it will be rolling out in the next month or so. One of the problems with the previous incarnation was that it didn't work on many desktops (including, embarrassingly, the BBC desktop) so we have been doing extra testing to make it as foolproof as possible.

And it's going to be the business. Readers will be able to choose which headlines they want from across the site, pop in a postcode if they are in the UK to get local weather and headlines, plus city data, breaking news, the lot. And neatest of all, hover over any of the headlines as they tick by and it will stop, and a four paragraph version of that story will pop up for you to read - you can then click into the site if you want more.

Last year we changed all our editing systems here so that the top four paragraphs of every news report on the site is also a perfect fit for our Ceefax teletext service on TV (go on, just check the two services). And providing this ticker, with its four par pop-up service, is another excellent offshoot.

WORD IN YOUR EAR, PAUL

Quietly, we have started another experiment to gather more feedback from the readers. Paul Reynolds, our World Affairs correspondent, provides a lot of the most telling analysis on the site, drawing on a lifetime of reporting around the globe. We are very lucky to have him, and now at the bottom of every by-lined piece he writes, you'll find an e-mail address for him. Take a look here.

Paul has received about 70 messages so far, some raising issues, others making suggestions for further articles, and the odd mad one, of course. And if anyone really launches a broadside, he can always resort to the Reynolds defence (hilarious legal gag).

This is just an experiment, but in time we hope to provide the same facility for many of our correspondents, as well as RSS feeds for their articles.

HURRICANE KATRINA

Traffic to the site this week has been dominated by the crisis in New Orleans, another disaster, in an extraordinary year, where it is almost impossible to comprehend the scale of the devastation.

We've had more than 1m page impressions a day for our picture galleries, and 600,000+ for the main report each day, and unique users to our video News Player doubling to more than 200,000 a day. You can see a range of our coverage in the in-depth, including more remarkable contributions from readers, in text and pictures.

The News site does not always send its own reporter to cover a major story. After all, the BBC has many TV and radio correspondents who can often file for us too. But with a story on this scale, where we want quality, descriptive writing, and our own still pictures, text and audio to help explain the full horror of the situation, it is worth it. Richard Greene has been dispatched and is just about up and running. There'll be plenty more from him in the week ahead.

YOU WERE ALSO SAYING

Amid the aforementioned grumblings about spelling etc, the majority of the postbag this week was earnestly defending the BBC News site against last week's allegations of left-wing bias, government mouthpiece, anti-Bush etc.

Indulging me for a moment, Simon Sabel, from Kent, UK said: "I have read all the comments from readers about the news service and I, for one, find it perfect as it is. If I want more detail but less accuracy you always offer alternate sites, in the same way you offer the Times to the Morning Star in the newspaper section. The BBC has always been known for unemotional straight, balanced reporting. In fact, I think calling it a 'news' site is misleading, and bundles you into the Sky News bracket, when you are actually a 'world reporting' site, which does make you very different from CNN and all the other news feeds."

And Graham J Noble from Santa Fe, US added: "For true appreciation of the broad scope and relative impartiality of BBC News, one should consider the United States. Here, there is simply no such thing as an impartial news outlet. As for the range of news, it is clear that little that happens outside of the US or Iraq is of interest. I find the BBC News website and BBC World news broadcasts my only reliable sources for news."

All this self-congratulation is getting a bit much. Pass the screen wipes.

But before I get too carried away, Rob J from Aberdeen raised a valuable point. "How am I supposed to take your editor's ramblings seriously when the picture of him is a dead ringer for Roger Mellie? All it needs is a speech bubble containing the word b*******."

Thanks Rob, that would also be a suitable commentary on a fair bit of this column too. We'll see what we can do about the picture.

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