Just a few interesting things I’ve seen over the past few days that impact further on this councils v local newspapers issue. The first is that – when councils decide to factor in ad-revenue into their communications budgets, it adds a significant amount of uncertainty – because ad revenue can go down as well as up.
Not only are councils seen to be competing with local newspapers by launching their own, they are giving free ads to local businesses.
Here’s Paul Canning on how councils are likely to start learning from commercial websites about how usability and site-optimisation can increase the effectiveness of their websites. I mention this because it impacts on that question of how council can promote democracy online.
And Paul is really busy with his blog at the moment – here he is on the ‘tea party’ movement in the US.
Then there’s the Local Government Knowledge Hub.
A blog about representative democracy, social media and a conversational politics. How will peer-to-peer communications change local democracy? How is representation changing? 
Thanks for that Paul – and thanks for drawing a link between site improvement (the Google webinar) and ‘engagement’ / democracy. Not always obvious to everyone :]