Weekend reading: Five blog posts I’ve read this week

Newspapers v councils < < < Tom Calver

Blackburn with Darwen Council press officer Tom Calver  offers a different perspective on the council newspapers debate. He argues the decline of newspapers is more to do with the fact that reporters do nothing than churn out press releases and write stories and ‘take calls from complaining members of the public and attack the local council.’ The post is part contradictory, because he earlier said that journalists no longer talk to members of the public anymore. He adds: ‘he result is newspapers whose prime quality is a grinding negativity: crime and grime, overblown petty (and often pretty groundless) complaints, rent-a-gob criticism which people get fed up of.’ I’m not sure councils churning out publications which look and act just like newspapers, but which seek to push out a pro-council line, is the solution. But it’s an interesting insight all the same – even if his criticism of local newspapers doesn’t really resemble any paper I know in the Blackburn area.

Twitter time management < < < Steve Buttry

It’s a common question for people first exploring Twitter: How much time is too much time, and how do you find the time to Twitter? I think we all know people who spend too much time on Twitter, and probably say too much on Twitter, and hopefully the tips from Steve will stop that from happening in the future.

Starring Stories in Google News < < < Google News Blog

A potentially significant update from Google News for journalists – the ability to star stories as you go along. Why? Well, when you star a story in Google News, it’s one way to let us know that you’re interested in that subject. When there are significant updates, we will alert you by putting the headline in bold so you can get more information. You can also follow your 20 most recent starred stories in the “Starred” section of Google News. For breaking news, it could become very useful.

Five tools for the Mobile Journalist < < < Mashable

Further essential reading from the ever excellent Mashable

Basic shooting tips < < < Advancing the Story

Great advice from a New York Times VJ which covers how to avoid some basic errors which can ruin video.

FOI Friday: 10 things we discovered thanks to Freedom of Information this week

Compensation to prisoners, use of tasers in Cambridgeshire, probation breaches in Bedfordshire and the criminal record of a football legend. FOI Friday has a distinct criminal theme this week…

Compensation paid to prisoners

The Lincolnshire Echo published details of compensation payouts to to prisoners at jails in its area. A total of £16,365 has been spent in the last two years on compensation at the county’s three prisons – HMP Lincoln, Morton Hall, near Swinderby, and North Sea Camp, near Boston.  A total of £4,500 of that was paid out for injuries sustained by inmates. A further £3,400 had to be forked out because of unlawful detention – such as prisoners being kept in the cells for longer than required.

Taser use in Cambridgeshire

My image of Cambridgeshire is of pretty little towns like Stamford, and the university city of Cambridge. Admittedly, I did cover an attempted murder of a man whose wife had hired a hitman, only to find out he was cop, in Cambridge once. But they were from Lancashire, which kind of explained it in part. Anyway, the Cambridge News used FOI to find out how often tasers had been used “to resolve dangerous situations”. The answer was 500. Shocking?

Was the Wizard of Dribble a coffee crook?

The John Terry scandal this is not, but using the Freedom of Information Act to gain information on legendary football Sir Stanley Matthews came up trumps for someone, reports the Daily Mail. The MoD released “secret” files – which presumably wouldn’t be available if Matthews was still alive today – and fellow player Stan Mortensen was arrested for trying to sell contraband coffee and soap during the Second World War whilst playing an international match in Belgium. Not a big story by any stretch, but an interesting precedent perhaps?

A twist in the case of the county council which believes FOI costs too much

The other week I blogged here about how Ken Thornber, the leader of Hampshire County Council, was enraged by the increasing number of FOI requests his authority was receiving.

He used the Guardian’s Joe Public blog to drag out this tired out routine:

I boil over with rage when my staff are tasked with identifying the number and cost of Fairtrade teabags that have been immersed in hot water on council premises in the previous financial year (0.2p per council taxpayer per annum), and the number of biscuits (plain and chocolate) that were supplied at council meetings.

There have been many other ridiculous requests. In addition to teabags and biscuits, my list of the most pointless ones so far includes what we spent on fireworks, alcohol, Christmas decorations (do people really expect us not to put them in residential care homes or children’s homes?); how many premises across the county are licensed to sell puppies and kittens; the number of mortuaries set aside for swine flu deaths; and a list of every piece of art we have commissioned in the last five years, including from schools.

And so on and so on. The conclusion being that councils everywhere should rise up against this tide of FOI requests and say ‘enough is enough’ and make the Information Commissioner decide on whether they should have to answer these so call spurious requests.

Proof that the media likes nothing more than eating itself?

Liverpool is a great news city. There’s always something happening. Which is just as well for the regional TV news people, because it means they’re never short of a strong story from the city.

Last night was no exception. There was a court case about the murder of an army cadet. There was the new chief constable promising more bobbies on the beat. And then there was the bizarre case of how an error in the Liverpool ECHO became the third story from one of the region’s main cities.

Before I go on, I should point out that I work closely with the Liverpool newsroom in my role as head of multimedia for Trinity Mirror. I also worked in the Liverpool newsroom for around two and a half years, first on the newsdesk for the Liverpool Daily Post, and then on running the website for the LDP. For a (very) brief period of time, I was assistant editor (digital) for both papers. And I count a lot of people in that newsroom as good friends. I should also point out the views expressed here are my own.

However, I’m pretty certain that I’d have written this post even if it was about a newspaper I’d never worked on or, indeed, one that I didn’t even like.

Brighton Argus short-changed by Council over FOI

Council trading standards departments are, in my experience at least, the most publicity hungry of council departments. If they’re not warning about dangerous toys, then they’re after a good show for their latest crackdown on some dodgy activity.

So it’ll come as no surprise to any council reporter that Brighton and Hove Council was happy to point out it had been making sure supermarkets weren’t overcharging at the tills. Turned out that every supermarket they visited had overcharged.

But for some reason, the council wouldn’t say which supermarkets it had visited. So the Brighton Argus asked for the information under FOI.

The council said no – and now the Argus is submitting an appeal to the Information Commissioner. Good luck to them.

The council’s argument is that all the supermarkets involved are taking action to make sure the overcharging stops. But to me, that’s not the point. If councils want people to believe they are looking after the interests of the public, then they must demonstrate they are doing so.

It’s no wonder so many people feel that supermarkets have the run of councils when stories like this crop up.

Councillor suggests repeat FOI requesters be blacklisted

The issue of rising costs associated with responding to Freedom of Information requests has raised its head again – this time at the Highlands and Islands police force in Northern Scotland.

According to the Aberdeen Press and Journal, a member of the Police authority up there, Lochaber councillor Donald Cameron is  concerned about the rising cost of dealing with requests.

The number of FoI requests to the force had increased by 41% and cost £160,000 in the past year. The 2,061 FoI inquiries received by the force in 2009 was almost six times the number submitted to NHS Highland in the period.

According to the paper, Cllr Cameron wondered if any information requested by FoI inquisitors was openly available or “unnecessarily kept back,” adding to the bill.

In other words, if the police were more upfront in the first place, then perhaps requests would fall.

Good idea – then he spoilt it.

FOI Friday: 10 things we’ve learnt this week thanks to Freedom of Information

No breast implants left at lost property in this week’s FOI wrap, but we do have the credit card action of senior quango bosses, crime on buses, ineffective smoking ban clampdowns, schools dropping Christian assemblies … and Ministry of Defence staff leaking stuff on Twitter….

What the credit cards tell us

Asking for the statements of corporate credit cards belonging to executives at Yorkshire Forward proved a good call for a reporter, according to this story in the Wakefield Express.

The papers reports:

Sixty-two executives at the agency, funded by the government and European Union to attract investment to the region, spent more than £170,000 on their executive credit cards in an 18-month period. Credit card statements obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show hotel stays in Brussels, South Africa, America, China and Japan.

Restaurant bills of up to £500 were charged to the credit cards, held by Yorkshire Forward bosses including chairman Terry Hodgkinson and chief executive Tom Riordan.

Social Media tickings off

The number of staff disciplined for ‘leaking’ things from the Ministry of Defence on Twitter and Facebook was revealed this week. There’s a bigger question here, perhaps, in looking at the impact social media has had on public bodies in terms of personnel issues – bullying, perhaps? Are people being ticked off for using it?

Christianity cancelled in school assemblies

I’m not sure if this story began life in the Birmingham Mail as an FOI but it’s one which could certainly be generated via FOI. The Birmingham Mail has established that 23 schools have received dispensation, in Birmingham, to stop holding Christian assemblies.

Coveritlive and Twitter: Covering councils in a new way?

Apologies for the lack of bloggage this week, but I wanted to flag up a pretty special live blog which the Manchester Evening News carried out today.

In truth, the liveblog itself wasn’t that unusual – the MEN has married up Twitter with Coveritlive to provide instant coverage of council meetings for several months now.

Today, it was the turn of Manchester City Council, where reporter Deborah Linton (@deblinton) using Twitter to update on proceedings, which was in turn pulled into Coveritlive.

What was particularly interesting was the other people who picked up on the #mcc hashtag used by the paper.

Not only was Deborah tweeting, but the council’s press officer (@sharper76) who was also in the meeting, was tweeting as well. Along with eight different councillors (@mikeamesbury, @sjbracegirdle, @cllrpaulankers @hulmelabour, @smurph99, @hulmelabou, @rosabattle and @jackiepearcey.

Public comments via the MEN website were few and far between, but then again, it’s a political meeting taking place during the day. And I also think we often get a little too hung up over the number of comments we receive on liveblogs – as long as there is an audience there, then it’s worth doing.

And at a time when newspapers are often criticised for not covering councils properly, I think one paper may have come up with a quick, savvy way of getting breaking news from the council chamber out for public consumption quickly.

Weekend reading: Five blog posts I’ve read this week…

1. Paper review: Manchester Evening News < < < Dyson at Large

One day, I’ll remember to blog about why I think Steve Dyson was wrong to argue that by providing online only content on its website, the Nottingham Evening Post is damaging for newspaper sales. But in the meantime, I’ll just link to his weekly blog on Holdthefrontpage. This week’s subject was the MEN, a paper which it seems everyone in the media has an opinion about. But it makes a change to see someone talking about the actual newspaper, rather than other issues like distribution, Channel M and putting all the weeklies into head office.

2. Local Media Predictions for 2010 < < < Philip John

Great post from Phil with three big predictions for 2010.

3. Speakers presentations < < < news:rewired

Heard about news:rewired? If you weren’t there, then here are the presentations

4. How to create video storytelling which actually tells a story < < < 10,000 Words

I don’t think newspaper websites have yet explored all the ways they can use video to tell stories. Mark Luckie has some good ideas.

5. Why didn’t our budget blogs work? < < < Ask The Echo

A  blog which allows readers to have their say on the product is an obvious idea, but doing it in a way which makes it more than just lip services to the idea or reader interaction is much harder. The Echo in Dorset seems to have it cracked, and in this post asks users why its live blogs discussing proposed council budget cuts weren’t well used. I’ve some ideas, which I’d post in the comments section, but I really don’t like blogs on newspaper websites which insist I register with them first.

FOI Friday: 10 things we’ve learnt thanks to Freedom of Information this week

The council which was paid to grit – but then didn’t do its own roads

We start this week in the North East, with The Journal in Newcastle. It reported this week that council chiefs have provoked anger after it emerged they gritted a Porsche garage car park while leaving areas outside pensioners’ homes untreated.

Details were released after a Freedom of Information request to the council, asking for details relating to gritting after Christmas Eve, as the region was gripped by the coldest snap in years. Who knew that councils took on private jobs like this?

Breast implant lost in hospitals

I suspect that never in his/her wildest dreams did the reporter who submitted an FOI to Kings Hospital asking for a list of items handed in as lost property expect to get this result. But, according to the response published in the South London Press, a breast implant, Italian passport and a Liverpool Football Club season ticket were among items lost at the  South London hospital

Swine flu jab uptake among medical staff

The BBC in London discovered just one in three frontline medical staff had been vaccinated against swine flu, after posing a question under FOI to the strategic health authority, NHS London. NHS London insisted the vaccine take-up was “encouraging” and rising, with more than 60,000 staff having had the jab.