Puffbox

I went along to last night’s political blogging event at the Telegraph, hoping to come away with ‘the answer’. And whilst it was a very enjoyable evening, I didn’t get my answer – but then again, I’m not sure we actually asked ‘the question’.

There was a lot of consensus. It’s influential rather than powerful (per se). The UK political parties are hopeless at it all. US politicians are more driven on this stuff, because their livelihoods depend on the cash it generates. There’s widespread paranoia about legal action (more than I expected). It’s good to give the grassroots a say. An election would have been fun. Etc etc.

But to put it bluntly, so what? I was struck by the number of people I spoke to afterwards who considered themselves ‘political’, and clearly put a lot of time and effort into their political blogging, but weren’t actively involved in party politics. There’s a large and currently untapped resource of energy and motivation. But the parties (certainly the Big Two) don’t seem too bothered about tapping it. There’s no sense that a new political force is set to emerge from the blogosphere… despite the fact that some – the BNP, the Greens, the LibDems even – clearly need the boost it could/would bring.

So all that really leaves is ‘marketing’. For individuals, broader name recognition, broader influence and ultimately, you have to assume, the offer of a safe seat. For the media, an acceptance that politics has gone bloggy, and they have to be active in it to maintain their brands. All of which is fairly selfish and short-term. If there’s a long-term revolution on the cards, I didn’t get the sense that anyone knew what it would be, or when we’d see it.

Media Guardian reckons the BBC is ‘planning changes to the way it presents its news output’. On the face of it, the TV changes recognise the collapse in the status of the flagship bulletins as they currently stand. The One will be more News24-y: more live two-ways, fewer recorded packages. The Six will ‘concentrate on fewer stories but cover them in more depth’.

Yes, these are clearly going to trim costs, but I think they make sense in the world of rolling news. Lunchtime isn’t a natural pause in the news cycle, quite the opposite in fact. So we’re kidding ourselves if we think we can take a reflective step back. By 6pm, the breaking stories have generally played themselves out, and it’s the right time to linger a bit longer.

Online, they say ‘resources are expected to be focused on the most popular stories, while it is thought there will be 20% less audio-visual content’. On the former: good, the BBC site has always tended to do too much written stuff, per story and per day. (I don’t know about you, but I very rarely read to the end of a story.) On the latter: a cut in A/V volume is probably justifiable, but it’s impossible to decide whilst they persist in their pre-YouTube approach to video. Hiding the video behind text links, popup windows and helper apps doesn’t encourage me to watch. A one-click-to-play Flash movie (with a preview) just might.

I’d never thought to look at the number of subscribers I have in Google Reader, until I saw Adrian Monck’s list of Britain’s most popular ‘news business’ bloggers. I didn’t realise quite how easy it was: just click on the ‘Add subscription’ button, and search for the blog/person’s name – not the URL (otherwise it’ll assume you wanted to subscribe, and will cut out the intermediary step). You can do more or less the same thing with Bloglines too, incidentally – and if you put the two figures togther, that should cover the vast majority of RSS readership, by the look of it.

Personally, I’m a little surprised how low everyone’s numbers actually are. I’m hereby laying claim to a ‘top five’ position, assuming my occasional pieces on the ‘news business’ are enough to get me into the club? And interestingly, I see my readers are more than three times more likely to use Google Reader than Bloglines. I wonder what that says?

Worth keeping an eye on LiberalConspiracy.org – the new ‘liberal-left‘ ‘hub‘/’super-blog‘ launched today by pickled politician Sunny Hundal. It sets out to be a ‘political magazine and discussion forum in the form of a multi-user blog’, and brings together quite a long list of left-of-centre bloggers and writers. Although if I’m honest, I only recognise a handful of them, and there’s really only two blogosphere ‘household names’ (if you know what I mean). Not much up there on day one, obviously – but having met Sunny (at the BBC Trust thing), he strikes me as the kind of passionate guy who will make things happen. Full marks for using WordPress too, naturally.

I’m indebted to Martin Stabe (and indeed, Matt Mullenweg) for spotting that the Black Country Express and Star website is built in WordPress. Further evidence, if it were needed (and I’m not sure it were), that there’s very little you can’t do with WordPress. I’d be interested in a write-up of the plugins and hacks they’ve implemented to get it looking so newspaper-y, if anyone’s reading this…

Rather than me retelling the story of how Newsnight is inviting its hardcore viewers (ie those signed up to its daily email) to affect the running order, here’s Jem Stone’s writeup and the show’s editor, Peter Barron’s explanation. I’m especially interested by Peter’s line:

Another concern is that we’re going to start reading out viewer e-mails on the programme. Don’t worry – we aren’t. Your e-mails are simply instant audience research.

The Newsnight crew have consistently shown that they really ‘get’ all this – and here’s further evidence. The fact is, nobody has yet cracked how to do readers’ emails and texts on TV. It’s not for lack of trying: but it’s painfully obvious that nobody’s yet found the formula. Five Live, meanwhile – and particularly the afternoon Drive programme – has more or less perfected how to do it on radio.

Apologies if this gets too circular, but I’m grateful to Mick Fealty for pointing to Ciarán O’Kelly‘s post re consultation and discussion. One line of thought in particular:

It may well be, for instance, that the distance that characterises interaction on the internet is actually quite a good thing in a divided society. Put simply, you can hold conversations with people you would not meet in, um, three-dimensional society, especially on sites where repeat games can encourage good behaviour. The trust can actually come from the lack of face-to-face interaction.