Ben Hammersley (born 3 April 1976 in Leicester, England) is a British journalist, broadcaster, photographer, and technologist, currently based between London, England, and Florence, Italy.

He is currently Editor at Large of Conde Nast's Wired UK magazine. He is also a freelance reporter for the BBC: he previously worked as the first Internet reporter for The Times, where he was shortlisted for one of the British Press Awards, and as a reporter for The Guardian and the UK arm of MSN.

During his early career, he specialised in technology journalism. Hammersley often reported from dangerous countries. He worked in Iran and Afghanistan. After travelling undercover to interview the Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, Hammersley moved toward war correspondence and foreign reporting.

In April 2008, Hammersley announced the founding of a company named Dangerous Precedent, with the strapline "Telling Truth With Beauty", promising a launch in Summer 2008 - though no other information has been forthcoming. Around the same time, at his geekyoto conference, it was announced that he was acting as a consultant at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, although the exact nature of his work there is shrouded in secrecy.

Hammersley is a Fellow of the RSA, and a member of the Savage Club and Frontline Club.

Multimedia reporting and broadcasting

In 2003, Hammersley blogged from Afghanistan.

In 2006, Hammersley was embedded with both British and American troops in Afghanistan, shooting video for The Guardian as a multimedia reporter for Guardian Unlimited.

In June 2007, Hammersley was the reporter in an experiment in multimedia journalism for the BBC. Reporting from Turkey in the run-up to the general elections there, he reported for BBC World, and the BBC World Service, while also placing behind the scenes video online. A 30 minute documentary entitled "Turkish Journey" was later shown on BBC World and BBC News 24.

In August 2007, he was reporting for the BBC World Service from Mindanao in the Philippines, notably staying with the Philippine marines on the island of Basilan as they searched for members of Abu Sayyaf.

Hammersley writes and presents documentaries on BBC Radio 4's documentary strand Analysis, covering Facebook in November 2007, and personal genetic testing in December 2008.

Hammersley also contributed the multimedia reporting chapter to the book "International News Reporting", published by Blackwell Publishing
After returning to London in late 2007, Hammersley started working as the Foreign Correspondent for the UK arm of MSN, starting with coverage of the 2008 Pakistan General Elections.

Photography

Ben Hammersley works in two very differing photography fields: conflict coverage, and fashion and portraiture. Apart from the photography taken during multimedia reporting trips, in 2007 he travelled to Beirut to photograph Hezbollah, and to the Philippines to cover the Basilan conflict.

Hammersley's portrait and fashion photography is mostly studio based. He held two exhibitions in Florence, Italy during 2007, and is currently working on long-form story based fashion imagery in London.

Writing, Speaking, and Technology

Hammersley was the author of six technical books and programmers' guides, notably with O'Reilly Media. He has been influential in the Social media and RSS communities, writing the first book on the latter subject. Other books have covered Blogging and the inner workings of Gmail. Latterly, his writing has moved onto foreign news and multimedia reporting techniques.

Between 2004 and 2006, he designed, built, and maintained the weblogs of The Guardian, including Comment is free. He is attributed with the first warchalking in the wild, on a street corner in Kensington, London in June 2002, where he ran one of the first wireless community network in London.

Hammersley also regularly contributes to congresses and conferences, such as the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention and the Global Investigative Journalism Conference. In May 2008, he hosted and co-organised the geeKyoto conference in London.

He coined the term podcasting, in an article for The Guardian . It was later the New Oxford American Dictionary word of the year for 2005.

Hammersley also built, and currently runs, the website for the Serpentine Gallery in London. He also works on digital strategy for the Frontline Club, of which he is a founder member.

Athletics

Hammersley is an ultramarathon runner. Having completed the Marathon des sables, and the 100km del Passatore he is now coached by Jason Koop of Chris Carmichael's Carmichael Training Systems. In October 2007, Hammersley suffered a major fracture of his right fibula, caused by massive pronation of the foot.

Biography

Ben Hammersley is the eldest of three children and was educated at Loughborough Grammar School, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, which he left after a year to be a producer at Associated Press Television News.

Bibliography

• Hammersley, Ben (2003) Content Syndication with RSS, O'Reilly Media (ISBN 0-596-00383-8).

• As contributor, (2004) Spidering Hacks, O'Reilly Media (ISBN 0-596-05777-6)

• Hammersley, Ben (2005) Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom, O'Reilly Media (ISBN 0-596-00881-3).

• Hammersley, Ben (2005) Hacking Gmail, John Wiley & Sons. (ISBN 0-7645-9611-X)

• As co-author, (2005) Hacking Movable Type, Wiley

• As co-author, (2005) RSS and Atom Hacks, O'Reilly Media

• As contributor, (2008) International News Reporting'', Blackwell Publishing