Online Journalism Blog

During January and early February we have been subjected to a festival of political Satirical Statistics, as blogs reviewed 2009, Tweetminster reviewed political twitter, and commentators reviewed all of these numbers.

Most of it has been fluff and fury, but amongst the noise these are the statistics which I think are worth noting with care.

Labourlist’s lunchtime email newsletter goes to 3500 people:

3,500 people now subscribe to the LunchtimeList daily email update, which gives a quick but comprehensive overview of all the day’s news and views in the Labour Party

That’s after a year of solid plugging, and simply highlights how tough it can be to build email lists from scratch. In my opinion, a focus on email was one of the priorities that Derek Draper got right from day one on Labour List as it is still the most reliable way of building a community. Kudos to Alex Smith for publishing the email numbers; as far as I know no one else has done so and tend to just say ” we have thousands of subscribers”. Usually “thousands” can be taken to mean “two thousand and a bit”.

On an obliquely related note, I received my “free trial” to the Editorial Intelligence “Daily Digest” email today, and – bearing in mind that excellent free media summaries are available from several thinktanks (such as Reform and Ekklesia) and elsewhere – I don’t see that these are sustainable as a paid-for product, unless they facilitate real added value somewhere else in an integrated service (in EI’s case, this is the EI Club).

Comment summary may go (perhaps has gone already) the same way as much reporting and photography – it will slide down the value chain and will become an engagement (rather than value adding) tool.

Most of the traffic to Liberal Conspiracy comes from Comment is Free, Twitter and Facebook:

Most of our referrals now come from Twitter, Facebook and the Guardian website (primarily from CIF writers and commenters).

I’m still reflecting on this. Is this an illustration that Liberal Conspiracy is reaching into the wider media, or is it an indication that writers for Comment is Free can direct traffic to blogs when they try?

The online political niche has not grown *very* significantly in the UK.

In their recent report Tweetminster reported around a hundred thousand people following Members of Parliament on Twitter. That is not significantly different to the 50 to 100 thousand people following political blogs quoted to me in 2007 by people associated with the 18 Doughty Street project.

Anecdotal, but interesting. How will real political engagement be built?

Wrapping Up

I’d welcome further comments and insights.

The Press Complaints commission, which is the industry body which attempts to regulate the printed media, and now the corresponding websites, is engaged in a “Governance Review” – and is wanting responses by January 25th 2010.

The commission last had the attention of bloggers when a proposal was made by the PCC Chairman Baroness Buscombe that they should be regulated by the PCC. Unity, at Liberal Conspiracy, organised a response which drew expressions of support from perhaps 300 bloggers over the following 3 days.

At that point I also commented on some problems with the PCC itself :

Baroness Buscombe, the Press Complaints Commission and the Internet: Hard Questions

Firstly, the Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission is a position which surely depends on political and commercial neutrality. (Baroness Buscombe takes the Tory Whip in the Lords)

Secondly, despite the Chairman of the PCC clearly needing to be a neutral figure, Baroness Buscombe used her speech to the Society of Editors to make party political points.

Thirdly, the PCC’s level of knowledge and understanding about the Internet is open to question; they appear not to understand News Headline Aggregators.

Fourthly, the PCC needs to defend vigorous investigative journalism. The Baroness – as current Chairman and a Peer herself – has suggested that the Lords should not be subjected to the same scrutiny as the Commons has been in the last 12 months.

Tim Ireland has been organising an excellent response , based around these five specific proposals:

SUGGESTION ONE: Like-for-like placement of retractions, corrections and apologies in print and online (as standard).

SUGGESTION TWO: Original or redirected URLs for retractions, corrections & apologies online (as standard).

SUGGESTION THREE: The current Code contains no reference to headlines, and this loophole should be closed immediately.

SUGGESTION FOUR: Sources to be credited unless they do not wish to be credited or require anonymity/protection.

SUGGESTION FIVE: A longer and more interactive consultation period for open discussion of more fundamental issues.

And he has done an excellent (and noisy) video involving space invaders, which you can see here .

The PCC has a special website set up, from where you can send your submission.

The closing date is January 25th 2010.

Local Bloggers are beginning to produce a few good examples of effective scrutiny of Local Councils. In this piece David Keen, who is a Vicar in Yeovil and writes regularly for my Wardman Wire political site, gives an account of a local controversy in the Somerset town of Somerton, which has lead to a number of resignations from the Town Council.

Further, some national commentators are beginning to notice that local blogs have a place in building a better political culture in the UK.

Over to David …

Blogging, Volunteers, and Local Democracy

Somerton is about 12 miles north of Yeovil, nice little place, with plenty of character, and some good local churches. Last week most of the town council walked out. Why? Initial reports suggested that it was all the work of one lone local blog (Muck & Brass), and that they’d got fed up with his criticism of the council.

Some of the reportage:

1. Newsnight (starts about 19min in, will expire in a couple of days). Slightly patronising. The clip is reproduced on Michael Cricks blog in Youtube format, and above.
2. Western Gazette (local paper). Love the ‘internet blogger’. Didn’t realise there were other sorts
3. BBC , which cuts and pastes from the Gazette.
4. The Mail.
5. The Times.

[Read more]

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