All talks with will take place from 5 - 6.30 in room E171, East Building, London School of Economics
14/10 Emily Bell, The Guardian
Emily has worked for the Observer and then the Guardian for the past seventeen years, setting up mediaguardian.co.uk in 2000 and becoming Editor-in-Chief of Guardian Unlimited in 2001. In September 2006, Emily was promoted to the new position of Director of Digital Content for Guardian News and Media. Guardian Unlimited, the Guardian and Observer’s network of websites, has won multiple awards, including the prestigious Webby for Best Newspaper on the world wide web in 2005, 2006 and 2007.
Emily writes a regular column for the Guardian about media policy issues and also for Broadcast magazine. She lives in Finsbury Park with her husband and three small children.
21/10 Peter Bazalgette, TV Executive, Endemol, YouGov, National Film and Television School, ENO
Peter Bazalgette is a media consultant. From 2004 – 2007 he was Chief Creative Officer of Endemol, to whom he remains an adviser. He has personally devised several internationally successful television formats such as Ready Steady Cook and Changing Rooms. He also brought Big Brother to the UK. Peter’s book about the international business of TV formats, Billion Dollar Game, was published in 2005.
Peter is a Non-Executive Director of YouGov and a former Board member of Channel 4. He is building a portfolio of investments in digital growth companies. Peter also serves as Deputy Chairman of the National Film and Television School and on the Board of the English National Opera.
4/11 Caroline Thomson, Chief Operating Officer, BBC
Caroline Thomson is the Chief Operating Officer of the BBC. She is a member of the BBC’s Executive Board and reports to the Director-General.
Caroline has responsibility for the BBC’s Strategy, Policy, Legal, Distribution and Business Continuity functions and for all of the BBC’s property plans. As a result she is the Executive Director accountable for the BBC’s major infrastructure projects: digital switchover, the move to Salford and the development of the BBC’s two major sites in central and west London. Caroline was also responsible for leading the BBC’s bid for a successful review of its Charter and negotiating the licence fee settlement. She manages the BBC's main policies in regulatory and compliance areas and freedom of information as well as the BBC's Legal Affairs and Government Relations unit. Caroline has responsibility for strategic analysis and planning and for the distribution of BBC services and is particularly involved in the development of the BBC’s digital strategy.
Caroline began her career in broadcasting 30 years ago, joining the BBC as a journalist trainee and going on to produce a range of BBC radio and television series including BBC Radio 4’s Analysis and BBC One’s Panorama. She left the BBC to work as political assistant to Roy Jenkins, then the leader of the SDP, during the 1983 General Election campaign.
In 1984, Caroline joined Channel 4 Television as Commissioning Editor, Science, Finance & Industry and went on to start Business Daily and the Equinox series. She was subsequently appointed Head of Corporate Affairs, reporting to the Chief Executive, Michael Grade.
11/11 Samira Ahmed, Channel 4 News
Samira Ahmed is a presenter and reporter at Channel 4 News. She's reported extensively on crime, terrorism and the arts including the cases of OJ Simpson, Jill Dando and Rochelle Holness, who was murdered by a serial sex offender. She started her career as a BBC graduate trainee in 1990, going on to work as a News Correspondent, a reporter on "Today" and "Newsnight" and a presenter for BBC World and News 24. Samira was the BBC's Los Angeles Correspondent from 1996-7 and a presenter for Deutsche Welle TV in Berlin 1998. Her documentary series "Islam Unveiled" on the status of Muslim women around the world, aired on Channel 4 in 2004.
18/11 Benedict Brogan, Daily Mail
Benedict Brogan is a career political journalist, having worked at the Glasgow Herald, the Daily Telegraph, and now as Political Editor of arguably the UK’s most influential newspaper, the Daily Mail. He is well known for his widely read political blog. Ben is also a frequent political commentator on television and radio.
25/11 James Harding, Editor, The Times
James Harding was appointed Editor of The Times on Wednesday 12th December 2007.
Prior to this appointment, he was The Times Business & City Editor having taken up the position in August 2006.
Before joining The Times, James worked for the Financial Times. He was the FT’s Washington bureau chief from 2002-2004, having previously been the FT’s media editor for three years. Between 1996 and 1999, he was a correspondent in China, where he opened the Shanghai bureau for the FT – the first European newspaper to open an office in the city since the 1949 revolution. He started at the Financial Times in 1994 as a corporate reporter.
Born in London in 1969, James studied History at Trinity College, Cambridge. He then learnt Japanese and went to work as a speechwriter in the office of Koichi Kato, then Japan’s chief cabinet secretary. From 1993 to 1994, he worked in the Japan unit of the European Commission. He speaks Japanese, Chinese, French and German.
2/12 Julia Hobsbawm, : 'From 24/7 to 24 Nanosecond: What this means for the media world', PR Consultant
Julia Hobsbawm is London’s first Professor of Public Relations at the London College of Communication (University of the Arts) and a pioneer of so-called ‘integrity PR’ in the UK.
In 2005 she launched Editorial Intelligence: Bringing You the World of Comment and Opinion (www.editorialintelligence.com) , a media analysis and networking firm which has been hailed as 'the smartest way to keep up with comment'.
Julia Hobsbawm co-authored Penguin’s Cosmopolitan Guide to Working in PR & Advertising in 1996, and edited the highly praised collection of essays on PR and Journalism entitled ‘Where the Truth Lies: Trust & Morality in PR and Journalism, published by Atlantic Books in 2007. In 2009 her book on work-life balance, entitled The See-Saw will be published.
Julia broadcasts regularly on the BBC and Sky about the media.
Each session is at 5pm at the LSE. Please email us to reserve a seat.