ITV News has has decided to expose itself and its leading journalists to the world. They have created an excellent video blog which has a series of YouTube-style films showing the inner workings of correspondents as they report from Afghanistan and Antartica to Grays Inn Road.

Some of it is spectacular: Bill Neely at the South Pole or Julian Manyon in the Arabian Gulf. Some of it is quirky and enjoyably silly – such as Mark Austin’s tour of the hazardous journey from his newsroom to the studio.

For students of the media’s inner workings you get a real insight in to what it is like off-camera. It shows the physical facts of modern TV news which are often rather smelly, boring and uncomfortable. 

ITV web producer Zoe Smith says that the purpose of the vlog is to “Show viewers in to our world”.

It certainly does and it reveals that most hacks are real people who are much more engaging when they can relax and step outside the formula-ridden world of terrestrial TV news. At the moment it does feel a little too much like a PR exercise and I would like to hear a lot more of the correspondents’ thoughts about the actual stories. But it certainly does make you think again about how TV news is made.

As Zoe Smith says, watching Mark Austin talking about sleeping with his crew in a cramped tent in Helmand Province has certainly “stripped away any glamour associated with war reporting.”