puffbox

The inevitable tragedy of Civil Serf

It's most amusing to see so many journalists writing up the Civil Serf story for the 'proper' media... particularly since most seem to be lifting the key quotes from each other's write-ups, rather than the blog itself (which was pulled, cached versions and all, by Sunday morning). Secondary sourcing at its worst. Steadily though, the Legend [...] read on »

The rise and disappearance of Civil Serf

It was going to happen eventually. I think Puffbox.com was the first to highlight Civil Serf's excellent blog, back in late January. She started to hit the big-hitting political blogs a few weeks later - see Dizzy Thinks, the Telegraph's Three Line Whip, The Times's Comment Central. But it's only when she hits the proper [...] read on »

No10’s new recruit is a geek

Various reports on the political blogs about Gordon Brown's latest recruit to the No10 staff: David Muir, who will work on political strategy. It's interesting for readers of this blog because, until earlier this afternoon, he was a fairly prolific blogger - until, that is, he flicked the password-protection switch on Typepad. The Times's Red Box [...] read on »

Sky’s innovation rewarded

Breaking news from, er, last week. Amid all the usual yah-boo of who won the RTS News Channel of the Year award, I missed the fact that Sky's 'Sky dot com news' bulletin at 7.30pm won the Innovation award. 'The winning entry aims to integrate the web and tv audiences and was judged to be [...] read on »

onepolitics, the new Puffbox site

It wasn't originally intended for public consumption, but today I'm unveiling a new website produced by Puffbox. onepolitics is an at-a-glance view of the latest posts on the growing number of political blogs being written by 'proper' reporters. You can wait until tomorrow to see what they say in print, or in tonight's bulletin; or [...] read on »

New report on politics and internet

Provocative stuff from Mick Fealty over at the Telegraph's Brassneck blog. He highlights a report by the Centre for Policy Studies which suggests that 'the internet could offer MPs an unmatched opportunity to create a niche for themselves, and to re-empower local politics.' And echoing the Economist's point about government in competition, he notes: The most [...] read on »

BBC internet chief promises to learn web

Nick Reynolds is the 'editor' of the BBC internet blog. I must admit, I was glad to see he'd written a post to explain what the 'editor' of the blog did, since it almost seems like a contradiction in terms. Nick says: 'The man who persuades important people in BBC Future Media and Technology to write [...] read on »

FCO’s brilliant Kosovo blog

I can't let today go by without mentioning the marvellous blogging effort over at the Foreign Office. Ruairi O Connell, deputy head of the British Embassy-in-waiting in Pristina, Kosovo, has put together a series of fascinating posts which give a terrific crash course in why today's declaration of independence matters. Simple things like the protocol [...] read on »

Where’s our Directgov blog?

When the Guardian's Michael Cross interviewed Directgov chief executive Jayne Nickalls in August last year, he wrote: In its response to the Power of Information report, the Cabinet Office proposes that Directgov embraces Web 2.0 technology by incorporating a blog in which users exchange their experiences. Now if it's really in the official Cabinet Office document, 'The [...] read on »

Another new FCO blogger (ish)

The Foreign Office launched itself into blogging last September, with a couple of ministers and a couple of high-profile ambassadors joining in the fun. Indeed, I note they've been scoring some PR points with it: Jolyon Welsh, FCO's head of 'Public Diplomacy' presented a case study on it at a conference last week. But what [...] read on »