BBC Pop Up is the
BBC's
mobile
Mobile may refer to:
Places
* Mobile, Alabama, a U.S. port city
* Mobile County, Alabama
* Mobile, Arizona, a small town near Phoenix, U.S.
* Mobile, Newfoundland and Labrador
Arts, entertainment, and media Music Groups and labels
* Mobile ...
bureau that crowdsources story ideas from its audience. It consists of a team of
video journalist
Video journalism or videojournalism is a form of journalism, where the journalist shoots, edits and often presents his or her own video material.
Background
A predecessor to video journalism first appeared in the 1960s in the USA, when reporters ...
s that create
documentaries in different countries. They hold
town-hall meetings and teach
university classes and
crowdsource their stories. The bureau was created in 2014 by the BBC's Matt Danzico and
Benjamin Zand
Benjamin Zand (born ) is a British documentary-maker, journalist and director. He was previously a documentary executive at BBC Studios and a former head of the BBC documentary team, BBC Pop Up. He now runs his own production company, ZANDLAN ...
and has since visited the United States, Canada,
Kenya, Russia and India. The current Editor and Head of BBC Pop Up is
Benjamin Zand
Benjamin Zand (born ) is a British documentary-maker, journalist and director. He was previously a documentary executive at BBC Studios and a former head of the BBC documentary team, BBC Pop Up. He now runs his own production company, ZANDLAN ...
.
The stories covered by BBC Pop Up have been wide-ranging, from
current affairs Current affairs may refer to:
News
* Current Affairs (magazine), ''Current Affairs'' (magazine) a bimonthly magazine of culture and politics.
* Current affairs (news format): a genre of broadcast journalism
* Current Affairs, former name for Behi ...
, to travel to breaking news. The programme airs on
BBC News and
BBC World News as well as the BBC website. For each destination it makes short online documentaries as well as one 24-minute documentary. Each video is produced, filmed and edited by the video journalists working on the team. The bureau has a team of about six people and is aided by the BBC's language service employees on embarking to a new destination. It doesn't have traditional reporters or presenters and attempts to reach a new, younger demographic on BBC News and BBC World News.
History
In 2014 the bureau was created. The same year it travelled to the United States for 7 months, visiting 6 different states for a month at a time. In each location the team held town-hall meetings with local residents, asking them what stories they wanted to cover.
The team then took these ideas and made documentaries from them. BBC Pop Up visited,
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is a home rule city that is the county seat and most populous municipality of Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, making it the 12th most populous city in Color ...
,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
Baton Rouge, Louisiana,
Sioux Falls, South Dakota,
Tucson, Arizona and
Tacoma, Washington making short films and documentaries. In 2015 the team visited Canada and
Kenya, and in 2016 the team has visited India
and Russia.
Controversies
In 2015 BBC Pop Up caused controversy in India for a question it asked, "Should India erase its snake charming culture to embrace modernity?". This offended many Indian Twitter users. Amid the backlash from Twitter users, BBC Pop Up issued a clarification and said no offence was meant. The practice of snake-charming was outlawed by the government in 2003.
Awards
In 2015 BBC Pop Up was nominated for the "Best Use of Crowd Sourcing or Citizen Journalism" award at The Drum Online Media Awards.
References
{{Reflist
BBC News