Less cynicism? Or less scepticism?

The Birmingham News Room – a well-executed information hub managed by Birmingham City Council has been launched and there’s a good write-up from Nick Booth over at Podnosh.

I don’t have much to add to his account of it, and I’d urge to to have a good look around and think about the idea., but the execution is very good.

From a personal point of view, it’s also very timely as I’ll be organising a session at the PICamp strand of Reboot Britain on …

Hyperlocality, active citizenship and disintermediated local newspapers

As local news titles close and community-run websites step into the gap, there is a new way for local government to converse with the public at a grass-roots level? Are community-run websites up to the job? How do these sites help the collective addressing of neighbourhood problems? Do online neighbourhood communities create new excluded groups? Do they improve or diminish democracy?

Introduced by: Kevin Harris, Nick Booth, William Perrin, Edward Walsh (Head of Press, LGA) 12.30-1.30pm, The Faraday Room (capacity – 70)

I’ve already posted something here on the question of active citizenship and local sites, but I think the Birmingham project foregrounds the issue nicely.

You may recall from that post that Will Perrin isn’t keen on the idea of local authorities publishing their own newspapers. Birmingham isn’t doing that, but in establshing an online newsroom of this kind, it’s doing a number of things.

Firstly, the newsroom is a transparent exercise. It’s a significant step away from the idea that the information providers – a small number of comms professionals – have a narrow set of channels that they communicate with. The press release that gets faxed to a couple of dozen named journalists on long-established newspapers. The hack that is briefed over a stiff drink in the back room of a boozer very early in the day (*sigh* there are some bits of my work as a political press officer that I miss….).

It also is a step away from the exclusive briefings that journalists were used to.

The newsroom is plainly set up, at least partially, with bloggers and other citizen journalists in mind.

A relationship such as this – between the politicians, the officials and the people that write up the council’s work – is going to be very different. Councillors will no longer be able to bargain with the press. There may be fewer deals and less tortuous media manipulation.

On the other hand, it may result in poorer policymaking as the council feels obliged to show it’s working and unable to slip in unpopular little trade-offs to make bigger schemes happen.

This also raises questions of impartiality. Council press officers could usually discharge this duty using journalistic scepticism as a filter.

If they did slightly oversell the work of the leading group on the council, the hacks would soon sniff it out and make them regret it.

This site sort-of works on the principle that the public are more savvy than they used to be. Who needs to read the journalists’ take on things when you can read the press release that was the main source?

And who’s going to trust a professional hack when you can get peer-to-peer scrutiny from People Like You?

For years, councils have bemoaned the lack of local journalism. As local papers have retreated, councillors have complained about out-of-town journalists who have failed to engage with the local authority, instead writing sloppy sensationalist stories.

Councils will be reaching the public thorough different filters – this site illustrates how – and it may change local government very significantly. Filters that are sometimes less systematically cynical than under-resourced journalists perhaps? But also ones that are less effectively sceptical. Will it be a positive change?