If you don’t live in the UK, you could be forgiven for not appreciating the scale of the disaster striking the country at the moment. Overseas, coverage of this summer’s flooding seems to have been limited – I suppose someone else’s weather story is pretty dull – but this is a seeping, creeping disaster.
The floods started earlier in the summer in the north of England; Yorkshire and Humberside. Over the last week, they hit the south – Cheltenham, Gloucester, Oxford, Reading and many other big towns. The total cost to insurers – £3bn, so far. The total cost to the economy is estimated at £6-7bn. More rain is due this weekend, and 300,000 people don’t have access to running water, and won’t for days.
At Guardian Unlimited, we’re working flat out on a roll-out of our new video capabilities. But a story of this scale meant we simply had to send cameras out ahead of time. Now, thanks to the hard work of those involved (particular props to Dan Chung, Francesca Panetta and Martin Godwin, who all did the wading), we got a few unique bits of film on the site which I think add a lot to our reporting of this terrible story. They were also able to feed audio into some excellent editions of Newsdesk, our news podcast, with a special floods edition today.
Journalistically, the videos share some features we’ll build on as we ramp up our output, including a distinct visual style and what’s hopefully a refreshing lack of TV news cliches. Now and into the long term, avoiding becoming a poor imitation of TV news is key. We need to be able to do something that’s distinctively the Guardian, part of an ecosystem of web content that includes audio, text and photography, produced by our professionals and by our users. But more of that later.
– Video: A flood victim’s story
– Video: Marc and Lol’s story
– Video: Transport woes in Tewkesbury
– Video: Water distribution in Cheltenham
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COMMENTS / 8 COMMENTS
Jackie Danicki thought this on Jul 27 07 at 8:46 pmNot to detract from the seriousness of your post, but: I would love to hear you say “props” in your delightful Scottish accent. Too cute!
Neil Mc thought this on Jul 28 07 at 8:48 amThanks Jackie – although I’m with Honest Man on this.
Other party piece words include: “Doomed”, “prudent” and “it’s murder”.
An Honest Man thought this on Jul 28 07 at 2:48 pmDoomed as in ‘Dad’s Army’?
Prudent as from our “revered” leader?
But surely it has to be ‘Jings, it’s murder’?
chris thought this on Jul 29 07 at 12:29 amCongratulations to all involved in the videos – I particularly like the “flood victim’s story”, which has a wonderfully elegaic feel to it. As you say, not like the TV news at all. Great stuff!
Neil Mc thought this on Jul 29 07 at 5:15 pmI don’t think Taggart ever said “jings”, did he? Just Ma Broon.
Muz thought this on Jul 30 07 at 4:38 amThe other word that seems to catch people’s attention when uttered in our delightful brogue is rural. In Down Under land I am always being asked to say murder, bush, book, look and rural. Very odd.
chris thought this on Jul 31 07 at 6:42 pmI have to spend four days (and nights) next week with, among others, a woman who keeps demanding “Say it again!” “It” is the word murder. We are indeed a doomed race.
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