As I write this my boss is discussing video on bmj.com with other senior colleagues, mainly to see if we should commit to providing more embedded video clips alongside news, comment, feature, and research articles. You might think this is a no-brainer. Other sites have been doing this successfully for years. And although it needn’t necessarily cost the earth, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. So I’d like your views on the three we’ve done to date.
Take a look at them. The first two clips are embedded in Ray Moynihan’s excellent feature on key opinion leaders in the drug industry. It was Ray, a BMJ visiting editor, who first got us into this, actually, when he first pitched the idea of the key opinion leader piece.
Our second video was of trauma specialist Chris Pross. It’s a powerful account of alleged torture of detainees at prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and doctors’ involvement in the practice. As well as watching the video, read Siddharta Yadav’s blog.
And finally, assuming you’re not Ara Darzi’d out, watch Rebecca Coombes’ interview with the man himself, filmed the day after his review of the NHS in England was published.
Does the format work for you? Did we choose the right topics? Should we focus on international issues, and give UK health politics a wide berth, perhaps? We haven’t commissioned video yet to accompany a research paper, but it seems a logical next step. Let us know what you think.
This is all part of bmj.com’s drive to embrace Web 2:0; again, the subject of a recent BMJ blog by Richard Smith And while we’re on blogging, we invited Kevin Anderson to talk to us all yesterday about how it’s done at the Guardian, where he works as blogs editor. He was an inspiration, and gave us some great feedback. We’ve been pretty proactive lately about getting more guest bloggers writing for us. We love the ones we’ve got. We hope you do too. But we want more. So if you have any ideas, or want to volunteer, have your say on the blog.
David Payne is Editor, bmj.com