Very good looking site at myturf designed as a means of coordinating volunteer effort in teh city.  I’ll be interested to see how/if it works.

I love a blog post which asks a good question. This lunchtime the editor of the Birmingham Post, Marc Reeves, popped up five corkers as he wrote about how one of his guest (corrected thanks to Jon) bloggers had attracted a good chunk of derision from readers for this post and this one.

So those questions…

1. Is a blog a tool only for individuals rather than media brands or organisations: A blog is one of two things – a stream of information attached to an RSS feed – or a tool for conversation. I’ve never managed to hold very enjoyable conversations with a brand or an organisation. So I plump firmly for the individual here.


2. What ‘control’ should a host brand such as the Post impose on its individual bloggers? As much as you like – you’re the boss. The problem is that if you assert too much control then the fun part of the blogging will go away, because your writers will be looking over their shoulder and the readers will sense they’re neutered. Two questions to ask yourself: What is news? if you describe something as a news blog what would you expect to find in it? What reasons would be good enough to ask someone to stop blogging? Clearly a contemptuous attitude to libel might be one. Would racism be another? How about 3 boring posts and your out. They’re a bit of an idiot? Again, you’re the boss…


3. What are the Post’s brand values in the eyes of readers? – In my eyes – changing. I think the quality which will most endear me to the post is openess and transparency because that creates the opportunity for an intelligent debate, which this city needs and the Post is well positioned to host. Coupled with lots of photos of people holding glasses of wine and standing next to Brian Woods Scawen.


4. Are traditional news brands inherently incapable of adapting to the new – two-way – nature of online journalism? No – some journalists might be, but they shouldn’t be blamed for that. You’ve got to be quick though. Just look at the falling revenue from all those estate agents trying to save money on their advertising budgets.


5. What now constitutes expertise in a given field? Fastest finger on google? Nah – too flippant. It is the depth of thought that I admire. Why? Because the web has made it easier than ever for us all to passionately hold to half thought through or borrowed ideas. I also reckon that highly networked people are well placed to be experts because they have access not just to information but other people’s brains to help them think through ideas. Did I just describe a university?
   

I also suggest you read the comments section on the post, many of my answers are echoed there.
(Marc – you just got 4 links with one post!)

To read more twitter responses to the very enjoyable and very local live streaming of the election results in Birmingham please look here. I enjoyed the streaming (hosted by Adrian Goldberg) but the text service (link here) was clumsy and the media pack only available as a pdf – which is bonkers ‘cos it should also have been full web pages (a culture that thinks in print/document terms?).

Election Bloggers Elsewhere:

Getting on the telly does help bloggers get comments – have a gander at Alix from the Lib Dems, Luke for Labour and Iain Dale for the Tories who were the BBC’s election bloggers. Even Ewan Spence managed a bit of the action. The BBC’s Emily Maitlis kept updating reports but no comments function and no trackback means that wasn’t my idea of blogging.

Other Links:

Birmingham 2008 Election results here.

Upyerbrum.

Vale Mail.

West Brom Blog.

At 3 am May 2nd Wikipedia was not updated.

Yahoo Pipe bashed together by Paul Bradshaw.

and a Journalist asks for sympathy!

Major thanks to Jon Bounds for starting and encouraging the shared election twitter. Update The morning after, this is he how he summed up the experience:

The actual conversation bounced between pub-style debate, willful surrealism, and the kind of listening and reacting to the actual words that microblogging really helps — collating the “did he really just say that?” factor between other viewers rather than waiting for the host to pick the politician up.

Four hours of it made us all flag, but it really was a worthwhile experience and in two years (when the local elections come around again) I really hope the council harness the conversation in some way too. It doesn’t have to be twitter (which, considering the UK local elections borked it, may not be around) but it was really powerful – and if publicised widely could be really useful.

Whilst Pete Ashton describes the evening here on the Birmingham Post blogs

Update on ranger Leyian who was shot: In total they gave him 6 pints of blood, and are keeping him under observation in case of infections.

That’s the latest tweet from the Mara Triangle on twitter and it illustrates some simple principles of good use of social media for charities and non for profit organisations.

The twitter account is linked to this blog written by the rangers in the Mara Triangle. It’s hosted by wildlife direct, an American charity who seem to be using a wordpressmu (multi-user) installation to offer blogs to a range of animal protection groups. The blog is also supported by image accounts on flickr and video on youtube. Integrating these tools is a key element of using the social web well.

The final element in this jigsaw though is the story. You have to have a story to tell and that means that what you write should be personal.

I hope ranger Leyian recovers quickly.

Hat tip to Robin Hamman.

I’ll be watching www.birminghamelections.org.uk/ tomorrow night to see how the service, fronted by Adrian Goldberg, delivers coverage of the local elections results.

It’s a job I’ve done myself – anchoring the Birmingham Results for Radio WM and reporting general and local election results for TV and radio. Days on research and spent preparing preview pieces and briefs for reporters etc. Even then I was expressing frustration with the fact that whilst the BBC was making results available instantly online local authorities didn’t. No RSS feeds of results to allow anyone to upadate their web service live. It seemed to reflect a fear of being the final publisher. Slowly thats changing and I think it is time that councils begin telling their own stories rather than relying on the mediators.

So lets see how it goes.

Update:  click here to see how it went.

Students at Frankley High have returned to their experiment with podcasting which I was helping to support last year. It’s taken a while to get back but we’re hoping to create a learning group where those who worked with us last year begin to show the teachers how to use the kit.

We also went through a fascinating process for a Creative Partneships project – we had a series of teachers pitch to us about how they would like to use podcasting.

It is a really positive starting point for any school work because it helps the staff focus on why they might want or need your support. It allows us to put our effort where we are most likely to find the enthusiasm to turn the skills into something of mainstream value, which of course is likely to further encourage other teachers to experiment with social media.

Anyway thanks to Laura for listening to the warm up podcast for a year 9 group and commenting. Laura also helped me spot this youtube film from commoncraft on her blog. Useful woman: Laura.

Update. Thanks also to Andy for his thoughtful comment on the Frankley Talk blog about the problems of background noise and people with hearing problems.

Lolcats iz hair ing.

Hat tip Jemimakiss.

Click here for a fine series of posts on how some news is now being provided by people writing things called newspapers.  Hat tip NUJ Newmedia blog.