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The BBC is lucky to have two outstanding producers in our Gaza office, Rushdi Abu Alouf and Hamada Abuqammar. They have been well trained, not least by Alan Johnston, and are giving calm, accurate, accounts of what is happening. Hamas has not imposed any restrictions on their reporting and they have been a model of impeccable journalism, in terrible personal circumstances. Most of us go home when the story is over. Gaza is their home.
The great frustration so far, is that we have not been able to send colleagues to help report the story in Gaza. The Israelis have not let any journalists in since the fighting started, despite a ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court that they should do so. We are obviously pressing as hard as we can to get in.
Since we can't get our own crews and correspondents into Gaza, we are dependent on our shots from the border and news agency pictures from inside. The aerial bombardment on Gaza has been easily visible, both on the Israeli and Egyptian border. The continued rocket fire out of Gaza has also been clear to see and film.
So far we have not seen any footage of the fighting on the ground. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the conflict, we are certainly seeing images of its consequences - destroyed buildings and many dead and injured Palestinians and the more limited death and destruction on the Israeli side.
There is a military censor in Israel and we've received text messages reminding us that any material touching on national security is meant to be submitted before broadcast. In practice, we haven't cleared anything before use. At one point, we had a live position next to Israeli artillery near the border with one cannon in clear view. We were not allowed to show a wide shot revealing the extent and location of the battery - and we said so in the live broadcast.
The Israeli military declared a closed military zone around Gaza a couple of days into the conflict and tried to push the broadcasters' satellite trucks back from their vantage points overlooking the Strip. A game of cat and mouse followed and we have been able to keep going with a view over the border. We've also reported live from Sderot, the Israeli town most threatened by the rocket fire from Gaza.
James Stephenson is chief of the Jerusalem bureau
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Today sees the official launch of the new Panorama website and I hope you won't mind me saying a few words about it here and seeing whether you think that this is a good use of the web by a TV programme.
So much work goes into a 30 minute Panorama or a one hour special and the website struck me as the perfect platform to showcase the best of our journalism online. Britain's Terror Heartland is a prime example; blog posts from Tom Giles and Jane Corbin provided extra context, while an extended interview with Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik gave those of you interested in the subject an extra perspective. Jane also wrote a feature on the programme and introduced it online in a short video.
I was also very keen for the new Panorama website to be more interactive and responsive to you, the people that use it. You should now find it easier to both get in contact with the programme and e-mail us any story ideas too. Where possible, we'll follow them up and see what can be done.
And even if you are already familiar with the website, there's more to read, watch, comment on and contribute to. If you're coming to the website for the first time, hopefully there's enough interesting material - features, picture galleries, short videos, full length films and blog posts - to make it somewhere you would like to come back to again.
While working on the relaunch, Ofcom published its latest report on the communications industry which made interesting reading, especially as 26% of those aged 15-24 claim to use the internet for "watching TV programmes", up 16% on the year before. 51% used the web for "watching video clips/webcasts", up by the same amount. But the report also noted an increase across all the age ranges for audio-visual content online and that the fastest growing online community is actually the oldest (although they are still in the minority).
Luckily, we were already planning to reflect this changing attitude to media online, which is why the first thing you'll probably have noticed when you look at the front page is a big embedded video player. This will either have key moments from a current Panorama programme or a reporter's take on the film they've made.
Now, just as I took over the Panorama website, there was a story in Broadcast magazine that said that Panorama was going to start doing online "minisodes". Having previously created and produced them for BBC Three's award-winning Current Affairs strand, Born Survivors, this was a reasonable assumption to make. However, I felt that the Panorama website needed a wider variety of video footage.
That's why there's a new section called Panorama Video Extras, a mixture of extra exclusive programme footage, original material made by my multiplatform team, re-versioned snippets from the programme, classic clips - and the odd minisode, too.
And after seeing the impact that the Born Survivors Season can have on other platforms outside the BBC, I was determined that we have a presence in the appropriate places too. So you can now keep up to date with the latest goings on in Panorama via Twitter, check out the archive on Delicious and watch some key moments from our films on YouTube.
We're now fully integrated with the iPlayer and the BBC's online programmes pages too, so hopefully when you come to the website you should now find it a lot simpler to catch up on the latest Panorama programme on iPlayer.
But
I also wanted to make
it easier to watch
Panorama online for longer,
a full
12 months
after they are broadcast
in fact.
We'
ve actually been doing this for
a while, but judging
by the e-mails we receive,
not a lot of
you are aware of this. That'
s why
we'
ve created
a new section
on the homepage called "Watch previous programmes
in full".
It does exactly
what it says
on the tin.
I mentioned blogs earlier, so who can you expect to hear from on the Panorama team? Well, the likes of our online archivist specialist Eamonn Walsh will be thematically linking programmes from the present to the past, giving classic clips a fresh airing and reflecting on the programmes from our past that you still chat about online.
Then from the main production team, there's Panorama Deputy Editor Tom Giles and reporters Jane Corbin, Raphael Rowe and John Sweeney. And of course I look forward to you all joining in the various debates too (indeed, some of you have already). Whether it's on our own blogs or your own, we'll do our best to make it one big (no doubt heated at times) conversation.
There's more...
One of the main things I felt was lacking from the old website was a permanent and prominent space for the reporters. For all their investigative and award-winning endeavours, there didn't seem to be enough information about them online. So we've created a new section called "The Team" and completely revamped all their pages with new pictures, text and the first in a series of bespoke videos that should give you a better idea of what makes the likes of Paul Kenyon, Vivian White and Raphael Rowe want to be a Panorama reporter today.
But I was acutely aware that despite the achievements of Panorama in 2008 and the technological advancements that allow a website to offer so much more, the programme itself has been around for 55 years.
To better reflect Panorama's enduring legacy, you can now find, among other things, a 50th anniversary film and microsite; a video timeline that charts Panorama through the decades; a picture gallery of famous faces from Panorama's past and a fun quiz to test your knowledge of the programme.
So all in all, lots of changes and hopefully lots more for you to get your teeth into. As ever, if there's anything you rate or hate, e-mail me at panorama@bbc.co.uk with "website" as the subject - or leave a comment below.
Derren Lawford is Panorama's Multiplatform Editor.
In recent years, our annual post explaining and apologising for the Today Programme guest editors has been little more than an excuse to namedrop and to tell a few bad jokes.
This year's will be no different. But we'd like to make one or two observations as well.
Observation 1: One of the most interesting things about being involved with guest editors is watching two different worlds meet - or, in some cases, collide.
This year's editors were Zadie Smith, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, Jarvis Cocker, Sir Win Bishoff and Zaha Hadid. So we're talking about journalism (that's us) rubbing up against literature, the Catholic church, pop music, big banking and high end architecture (that's them).
And in most cases, we rubbed along fine. But of course there were occasional misunderstandings.
Zaha Hadid is a brilliant architect - the artist's architect some call her - and she's a delight to work with. But some of her ideas can be a little hard to get your head around if you haven't had the proper training. Talking architecture with her involved climbing a learning curve as steep as the Seagram building.
At one of our early meetings we sat at a tableful of prototypes for various Hadid projects currently in production.
TODAY PROGRAMME: Ah, that's beautiful. Is that the Abu Dhabi Performing Arts Centre?
ZAHA: No, that's a coffee pot.
TODAY: Oh. How about that - more kitchenware?
ZAHA No. That's the Vitra Fire Station in Germany.
TODAY: Right. What about this? The Glasgow Transport museum?
ZAHA: No, that's a shoe. Are there any other producers who might want to work on my programme?
And finally.
Zadie Smith is a writer. A clever writer. Writers sit in small silent rooms, alone, and write. We at the Today Programme are journalists. We sit in a big noisy room full of mice and interrupt each other every minute and a half. So when we asked Zadie for question ideas to help Evan (probably the only man we know who wouldn't actually need them) to interview the world's cleverest neuroscientist about rectilinear shapes, grouping, and gull chicks who like abstract art more than their mothers, instead of a few lazy, ill-informed jottings we get several hundred words of sculpted prose which could be published as an expert academic analysis of said clever neuroscientist.
If that weren't intimidating enough, Zadie wasn't just first in line when the brains were handed out. She also pushed to the front of the height, kindness and general comeliness queue. It was too much for some of our producers.
This is a transcript of an early meeting between Zadie and the Today production team:
ZADIE: The interesting thing about Obama's oratory is that he uses all the classic Greek ingredients: pathos, logos and, er...
TODAY PROGRAMME: (excitedly) Porthos... no, Aramis.
ZADIE: I think those are two of the three musketeers. Ethos. That's it. Ethos.
TODAY PROGRAMME: Ethos, yes. Ethos. Can I marry you?
So that's our first observation and I can't really remember what Observation 2 was, apart from possibly that an incredible amount of work goes into these programmes from quite a few people (special mentions for Helen Margolis and Tom Colls - all the others, you know who you are, thank you).
Next year, you ask? We're already planning it: JD Salinger and Robert Mugabe are interested.
by Peter Hanington and Dan Clarke. Peter Hanington is assistant editor, Today programme.
Peter Hanington is assistant editor, Today programme
If you read Boxing Day warnings given in the Daily Mail by media commentator Stephen Glover, you might believe that the blogs written by senior BBC reporters such as Robert Peston, Nick Robinson and Justin Webb were sounding the death knell of journalistic integrity at the BBC. Mr Glover's thesis was that blogs "corrupt the distinction between news and views which is supposed to be sacrosanct at the BBC", and he said that by allowing "the proliferation of blogs", BBC managers were "disregarding the Corporation's duty to be impartial".
There are two things which need to be said in response to these concerns. The first is that Mr Glover is quite right to point out the importance to the BBC of the distinction between news and comment, the value that our audiences attach to it, and the dangers for reporters who "let their hair down" (Mr Glover's phrase) and allow their normal standards to drop, simply because they are writing in a blog. We at the BBC are acutely aware of these points.
But the second thing which needs saying is to reject the implication of his article that for a reporter to write a blog necessarily means them becoming purveyors of opinion and comment. He claims it is "impossible to write a half-readable blog without peppering it with opinions". That's just not true. We look to our expert editors such as Nick and Robert to tell us what has happened, to explain why it is or isn't important, what it means, and even what might be the effect. As to what their personal opinions about the news are, well, that's just not the business we're in.
Mr Glover also says "hard-pressed journalists are not using their time well if they spend hours penning blogs". I'm afraid the millions of people who look at our blogs will, like me, disagree with him. Research published by the BBC Trust in May this year, well before Robert's blog became such a useful companion to the credit crunch and recession, indicated that the BBC's blogs are "already highly appreciated by audiences" - and that even those who do not use them recognise their value.
Giles Wilson is editor of BBC News blogs
Losing your job is a bitter blow for most of us: for young people that blow can be much more bitter and brutal.
Below the headlines of the latest jobless stats lurks a worrying figure for teenagers and early 20-somethings: one in seven under 25s is now out of a job.
When firms cut jobs young workers are often hardest hit. More than 700 a day are signing up for the dole, the fastest rate since Labour came to power in 1997.
So getting a firm foothold on the bottom rung of the career ladder is a challenge: losing that foothold easy. Temporary and casual contracts are the norm - with big firms and service and retail sectors cutting back, many jobhunters are finding their prospects are bleak.
Our reporter Jim Reed spoke to some of them for pieces broadcast on Radio 1's Newsbeat, 1Xtra News and Breakfast News on BBC1. We set up some advice on the Newsbeat website.
And many listeners contacted us. 1Xtra's - the youngest of any BBC adult service with a median age of 21 - had their say.
K.H.Z said: "I graduated from uni in summer, have all the skills needed 4 a job an i cant get anything cuz of experience. I have a fultime job on minimum wage an i should b earning at least double! Vexes me propa."
Another added: "Im 18 and was made redundant 4 months ago iv applied for at least 50 jobs and around 5 hav got bak to me sayin i need experience i dont want to b on job seekers allowance i feel sick knowin im able to work yet nobody will give me work."
But not everyone from the age group
