One of the recurring themes of this blog is the way that weblogs are (as Charlie Beckett put it in that book review that I pointed to the other day), reconfiguring journalism and political discourse. The most prominent examples of this in the UK have been the war of attrition that right-wing libertarian bloggers have [...]
Posts from ‘July, 2009’
Empowerment research – yes – actual research….
I went to an interesting seminar last week at the CLG (yes – unusual!) where Prof. Lawrence Pratchett and Dr Catherine Durose from De Montfort University talked about a recent systematic review they have carried out of a number of different empowerment tools. You can find the full report on the CLG site and its [...]
Reconfiguring journalism and political discourse
Sometimes, a book review provokes a response that is worth reading even if you can’t afford the time / cash to read the book itself. Here’s an example from Charlie Becket’s verygood Polis blog reviewing ‘The Myth of Digital Democracy’ by Matthew Hindman: “…the US obsession with the political blogosphere distracted people from the much [...]
Pravda Press
Having posted yesterday on the question of local council-produced newspapers, I’ve just seen a piece in London’s Evening Standard by Andrew Gilligan. “In the past few years, a total of nine London boroughs have ditched low-key, factual publicity material and started high-frequency, in-your-face tabloids, full of good news – even if, as we shall see, [...]
Transparency v Objectivity
As local newspapers retreat from providing anything like a good quality of news coverage, local authorities are wondering what their response should be. On the one hand, there’s the model that Birmingham City Council have taken – providing a much more user-friendly information gateway that is designed to provide resources to citizen-journalists and bloggers. Other [...]
Eric Blair on fanatics
One of the unexpected joys that the blogosphere has brought is is the revival of writings that were originally presented on a serialised basis. Samuel Pepys diary, for example. ‘Geoffrey Chaucer hath a blog’ is a nice variation – a contemporary set of sentiments put to the vulgar rhythms of late-middle English. Flann O’Brien would [...]
Detoxifying big decisions
Last week, David Cameron offered a fairly populist ‘bonfire of the quangos’ proposal, with the implication that politicians would take back many of the toxic decisions that they had farmed out to overpaid bureaucrats. In the FT the other day, Philip Stephens questions the emphasis: “…broadcasting policy accounts for only about 5 per cent of Ofcom’s workload. [...]
Who will cover the cost of ‘scrutiny’?
Anthony has beat me to a response to the new Green Paper today, so I thought I’d develop his scepticism about the appetite for ‘scrutiny’. For me, the interesting question is – as ever – around the whole notion of representation. Town Hall Matters has lighted on this question and that post returns to a [...]
Strengthening local democracy, kinda
I’ve just read through the new Strengthening Local Democracy Green Paper, and I can’t sum it up better than Talking Heads did in their 1977 hit, Psycho Killer. Not the refrain “better run, run, run, run away”, but the verse: You start a conversation you can’t even finish. You’re talking a lot, but you’re not [...]
To paste to your clipboard
Ross Ferguson’s blog with it’s bold new eye-catching design has a post with the sort of data that I suspect will form the basis of a good many plagarists’ powerpoint presentations over the coming months. Here’s my standout stat: “38% of professionals believe the internet makes them more productive (OxIS 2009)” I don’t know how [...]
