As a student, I was often told I should make full use of it whenever I could. To my shame, I rarely did, other than to find out the costs of the University of Lincoln’s Vice-Chancellor’s transport costs. It wasn’t a scoop.

But here’s a brilliant site that not only holds your hand while you make requests, but also shows you the requests of others too. In other words, an absolute goldmine.

Personally, some of the more interesting requests — and answers — came from the BBC and its viewers. A selection:

Request: Why was the annual conference of Britain’s fourth most popular political party, the British National Party, held November 14-16 2008 not reported on the BBC?

Response: Please note that your request is outside the scope of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the Act”) but we are happy to provide you with some information on this occasion. The reason that BBC News did not cover the conference is that we weren’t told about it by the party; as you may be aware, the BNP don’t usually tell journalists when or where it will be held. Indeed, on the BNP website the only mention of the annual conference is a report afterwards. The BBC has of course covered the BNP in other circumstances this year.

Request: What percentage of the BBC Licence Tax is spent by BBC employees on illegal drugs?

Response: The BBC has a zero tolerance policy towards illegal drugs and no income from the TV Licence fee
is spent on their purchase.

Request: “The BBC recently gave a gift of shopping vouchers to members of staff at World Service News and
Current Affairs. Did all WSNCA staff receive the same gift? How much were they given and how much did
this cost the BBC?”

Response: As part of the BBC-wide ‘Celebrating Success’ scheme, all 290 staff in World Service News & Current
Affairs were awarded £100 in shopping vouchers in July of this year as a reward for outstanding
achievement. This included winning eight prestigious Sony Radio Awards and increasing audience figures by
2 million listeners. The achievement was exceptional as the BBC World Service had previously only won
one gold Sony Award in its 75 year history.

The vouchers were funded from the department’s own budget and all staff received the same amount. The
total cost of the reward was £29,000.

I used the site to ask for information that I’ve been curious about for a while too:

Dear Sir or Madam,

I would like to request details of the precise number of refunds
claimed in full by BBC viewers following a) the departure of John
Sergeant and b) The ‘void’ semi-final vote.

Yours faithfully,

Dave Lee

What do you think?

The current obsession with internet advertising and Facebook will gradually go the way of all the digital fads over the last few years.

Not my words, but those of Mark Ashley, managing director of the Wigan Courier, pictured below on a recent family holiday:

I know what he means though. Digital fads, they’re everywhere. I mean, that quirky little Amazon site soon dried up, didn’t it? And that eBay… pfft.. no-one uses that anymore. And to think we all thought E-MAIL was a good idea! Aaaahahaha!

No.

On the wall in front of me is a big sign that says ‘LINK!’. Underneath, in brackets, it says “It’s what we do”.

It really is. One of my tasks at the BBC is gathering links about what is being written about the BBC’s internet endeavours and rounding them all up into neat little posts. The result of the linking? We get more readers. Loads more.

Another part of my job is preparing guest posts. Before Christmas, I posted this tutorial by Andy Quested on how to use the HD test screen. Today, a couple of weeks later, the story has gone around the newspapers and blogs. Not sure why it took so long, but there you go.

Anyway, I wanted to share how by not linking, sites can really fail in a basic fundamental of reporting: providing information.

Take the treatment of the story on the Independent.

“The famous BBC test card featuring a girl playing noughts and crosses with a toy clown has made a return to the nation’s television screens.

The image is being broadcast on the BBC’s high definition (HD) channel to help viewers set up their HD TV sets.”

That’s the opening two paras, but that’s the sum of the information given. What channels? What time? How do I use the test screen to fix it? How do I need to know if it needs fixing anyway?

No worry, though, because they can solve all that by linking to our post. We know they have read it — as they’ve lifted quotes directly from it.

But there’s no link.

The Daily Mail does it a little better. They don’t link either, but they at least gave us the chance to add the link into the comments of the story. “Find out how to use the test card here,” wrote my colleague Nick Reynolds. Only problem being that the comment is sat gathering dust in big moderation queue in the sky — and I doubt it’ll see the light of day now. So that’s another failed story that doesn’t offer all the available information to the reader.

Then this blog post turned up. Not only is it the first story (of the ones I’ve seen) which mentions the fact the quotes are from our blog entry, but it’s the only one that provides the link to Andy’s post. The story would be useless without it, after all — but try explaining that logic to the newspapers.

The mentality of the Indy and Mail* is obvious. “Why should we link to our competitors?” they’ll argue. And they’ll agree with themselves, wholeheartedly. “If we link to a story, they’ll leave our site and we’ll lose readers,” they’ll decide, without looking even beginning to consider the facts.

It’s clear that, out of my three examples, the best piece of journalism is from the blog. It provides more information, cites its sources better, and links to the instructions so people can find out how to use the information.

* The ‘Indy and Mail’ sounds like a single newspaper, doesn’t it? Well they are in the same offices now, after all…

Did this one completely pass me by? Noticed tonight that the (rather pants) film ‘What Women Want’ is on BBC iPlayer. They must have done some serious rights wangling to get that one sewn up.

It’s great news, of course: How often do you seen great films on at times that you’re never watching the TV?

More please.

It is of course the month of predictions. What’s the next big thing? Obesity, if last year is anything to go by. Heh.

But seriously, it’s one thing having willy-nilly comments featuring slightly educated guesses, and another thing all together to bring together some very progressive minds.

Step forward, Clay Shirky. His predictions are hardly groundbreaking, but he puts them in terms that doesn’t belittle anyone. Often, pro-print people dismiss online too aggressively. Likewise, pro-onliners lay into print folk as if they were mentally backwards for not wanting to blog their balls off. What Shirky manages is to hit a very logical middle ground. All parties should be reading this and thinking: “Yeah… that makes a lot of sense.”

Example:

The great misfortune of newspapers in this era is that they were such a good idea for such a long time that people felt the newspaper business model was part of a deep truth about the world, rather than just the way things happened to be. It’s like the fall of communism, where a lot of the eastern European satellite states had an easier time because there were still people alive who remembered life before the Soviet Union - nobody in Russia remembered it. Newspaper people are like Russians, in a way.

Perfect point.

An hour or so ago, Martin Stabe tweeted an age old newspaper problem:

Spent cramped flight wrestling with FT, WSJ, IHT and Die Welt. Broadsheet print is a rubbish format. about 1 hour ago from txt

Somehow in the midst of tradition, we’ve forgotten that the reason for broadsheets being broadsheet was simply that it was easier — when printing presses had to be painstakingly put together with big old plates — to print a few massive pages, rather than a lot of smaller pages.

I’d assume the broadsheet size was deemed as big as it could possibly go before it became unreadable.

And yet, papers like the Telegraph still insist on broadsheet in the name of tradition and, unbelievably, journalistic value.

What Shirky is saying, is that newspapers are important to the democratic world (and even the un-democratic world, I guess) because of the journalism that’s in them. The fact it’s on paper means nothing at all.

In the same way that Town Criers became obsolete when printing came along, newspapers are now obsolete because the internet has come along. What exactly are newspaper publishers fighting? Give up already. Become web publishers — and then work on producing quality journalism once again.

Sooner or later there’ll be an invention that will bring print-style journalism back to our hands. Foldable LCD screens, whatever. But until then, the web is where we all are — so publishers must put every resource they have into making their site absolutely bloody brilliant. Because if they don’t, they won’t survive when the print/LCD resurgence happens.

So. Don’t be proud of your newspaper. Be proud of your journalism. If you don’t acknowledge that clear fact then there is no future for your print edition — then there’ll be nowhere to put your journalism anymore.

Ask yourself, which is the greater tradition to protect: newspapers… or democracy?

I’ve been trying (a little) to shake off that video for three reasons. First, I sound a bit drunk. Second, its shoddily shot — but that can be blamed on the previous point, rather than poor video skills. Promise.

Thirdly, and by far the most important, I feel the message portrayed in the video doesn’t adequatly describe how I feel about the situation. It seems I’m annoyed at the BBC for not going big on the earthquake like Sky did. Not so. I’m annoyed because it wasn’t mentioned. Equally, Sky’s coverage was a bit over the top.

(On a side point, Sky made a promotional video using my footage - and I understand they’ve used it to promote their breaking news pedigree. Good — I’m very pleased with that. The key fact here is that Sky gave the public what it needed: information. The BBC lead with deathly silence.)

Luckily, some weeks later, I was given the chance to add to my thoughts on the BBC’s NewsWatch program. Sadly I can’t link — it’s no longer online.

Their defence was not that the BBC was slower, but that as it was early in the morning, the coverage on News 24 was in fact BBC World. And, thus, a minor earthquake is not important in the complete international agenda. Can’t argue with that, can you?

Well yes, I think you can.

Firstly, the first comment made by the BBC anchor was along the lines of “We’re just hearing reports…”. This suggests that it’s the first they new about it and it would also suggest that it hadn’t been held back because it wasn’t in keeping with the international news agenda — the reason given on NewsWatch.

If indeed the BBC knew about the earthquake straight away, why did they wait until an hour later to mention it? Surely this ‘unimportant’ story is even less important an extra hour after it occurred? For me it’s a choice of mention it straight away, or not mention it at all. Everything points to the news team being too slow.

I’m convinced that nobody at News 24 knew about it until the very first moment the anchor mentioned it.

But let’s get back to the BBC’s defence. I can see the logistics (and economics) of simulcasting BBC World and BBC News 24. On a normal night, I don’t have a problem with it. But what happened on earthquake night was a sizable amount of people were awoken from their sleep by a large, continuous thud. My first thoughts were that our stairs — already  a bit shaky — had collapsed. My second thought was earthquake. When we went outside, a lady was telling us there’d been a bomb. Another said that the pharmacy they were building down the road had fallen down.

All silly assumptions. The point is, though, that we DIDN’T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. Yes, it was minor. Yes, by midday the next day, it was nothing more than a nib on the national news. But when it had just happenened, nobody knew what was going on.

Sky News told us. BBC News didn’t. Which provided the better service to the public?

“Minor earthquake in Lincolnshire”…. good, let’s go to bed. That’s how it should have all happened.

The irony of all this is that I now work for the BBC. And it’s no exaggeration to say that I love it. Even in my small role, I’m extremely proud of my contribution to the greatest news-gathering organisation in the world bar none.

Plenty of people have used my video to see it as some sort of ammo to fling at the licence fee. Bunch of fools, I say.

Click here to download.

Edit: Lots of people have been saying on Twitter that it doesn’t seem to be working. Apparently, there aren’t many clips that support it at the moment. Try Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

If you can’t make it out, the message reads:

“To protect our younger customers, you have to be over 18 to buy imitation firearms. Please don’t be offended if you get asked to prove your age at the till.”

It’s only fair, I guess. If someone came up to me wielding a Power Gear Quantum Fazer, I’d be shitting myself.

But here’s a site I’ll send the un-enlightened to from now on: Tweetminster.

The site was inspired by the equally brilliant Tweetcongress.org, and seems to be driven into action by the refreshingly tech-savvy Labour MP Tom Watson.

From the site’s about page:

“TweetMinster is a public service that makes it easier to connect the public with Members of Parliament using Twitter. We want constituents to find their MPs (or invite them to use Twitter if they’re not already doing so) and through encouraging participation and open conversations, promote better and more transparent communication between voters and elected representatives.”

Here’s the thing with Tweetminster — it requires no extra work for anyone, yet it will benefit thousands. Importantly, because Twitter is not behind a log-in wall (you can read tweets whether you’re signed in or not), it brings a whole new purpose to tweeting MPs. With each new site like Tweetminster, the ratio of effort vs audience becomes much closer together. Sure, Labour’s Andy Reed may only have 40 followers. But that’s not to say his contributions aren’t going anywhere.

If you were in Andy’s constituency, wouldn’t you appreciate knowing this sort of information?

“asked Chancellor to consider increasing the size of the financial stimulus in light of depth of global slowdown in any new year budget”

It may not shake the world of democracy at its very core — but when I consider the communications between me and my own MP, I do think a Twitter account is a must for any person in politics. I wonder if I can convince him to join.

This may seem like a grumpy pop at people making honest mistakes, but some of these are just priceless. Here’s my favourites.

From Dave Barry at the Miami Herald:

In yesterday’s column about badminton, I misspelled the name of Guatemalan player Kevin Cordon. I apologize. In my defense, I want to note that in the same column I correctly spelled Prapawadee Jaroenrattanatarak, Poompat Sapkulchananart and Porntip Buranapraseatsuk. So by the time I got to Kevin Cordon, my fingers were exhausted.

From the Guardian:

We said that, in the American TV drama 24, Jack Bauer, the counter-terrorism agent, resorted to electrocution to extract information. You cannot extract information from someone who has been electrocuted because they are dead (Questioning, the Jack Bauer way, page 1, April 19).

From The Valley News:

The Valley News, a newspaper distributed in Vermont and New Hampshire**, committed what many journalists and editors would agree is just about the most embarrassing typo possible: it misspelled its own name on the front page. Behold:

Here’s the resulting Editor’s Note:

And my personal favourite — based purely on the use of the phrase ‘bag of dicks’ — is from Wil Weaton’s blog:

Best Blog Correction
Back in January, The Consumerist reported on a rather vulgar-yet-amusing post on Wil Wheaton’s blog. After seeing the Consumerist post, Wheaton contacted them to clarify things. From the resulting Consumerist post and correction:

Wil Wheaton (of Star Trek: The Next Generation) would like you to know that he does not and will not endorse AAA Insurance. UPDATE: We initially reported that Mr. Wheaton disliked all of AAA. Not so. He tells us:
“I’m happy with the rest of the AAA services I’ve used, and continue to use. The insurance, though, can eat a bag of dicks.”
We regret the error.

Go and read them all.