This is my personal website where I intend to write, occasionally, about political journalism. It may not be updated as often as it should be, as I also have a blog on The Birmingham Post site.
Culture Secretary Andy Burnham gave regional journalists the strong impression he doesn't plan to intervene in the row over the BBC's planned local news websites.
Trinity Mirror CEO (and therefore my ultimate boss) Sly Bailey told an industry conference earlier this month that commercial news organisations were investing in digital platforms.
But she said: "If online audiences are diverted away to BBC sites though unfair competition, using public money and the BBC's unparalleled promotional machine, there will be an impact on the commercial sector's ability to develop these digital businesses, to grow these digital revenues and to invest."
The BBC's strategy "is anti-competitive, it is unnecessary, and it will waste public money," she said.
Mr Burnham talked about the importance of local newspapers and his admiration for the work they were doing developing digital media.
But he said it was not his role to tell the BBC what to do, and pointed out that the BBC Trust (chaired by former Birmingham Council Chief Executive Sir Michael Lyons) was already considering these issues.
He also said the BBC deserved some credit for developing its website ten years ago, when it got some stick for doing so.
I've added a new page to this blog with a round up of posts from Birmingham and West Midlands-based bloggers, with the highly original name Blogroll (on the menu up top).
As I write, three of the posts listed focus on the new-look Birmingham Post.
Paul Bradshaw has an interesting post on his blog, calling for ideas about the ways newsrooms could change in order to help journalists adapt to changes in the industry.
My initial response was heartily to endorse his first idea, which is to make it easy for journalists to know when someone has commented on something they have written, so that they can respond.
People sometimes comment on blog posts you have written weeks ago, and unless there's some kind of alert system to tell you, it's easy to miss them.
In more general terms, I'd like to see news organisations develop content management systems which are designed to get journalists doing the things they (presumably) want them to do.
Let me see what's happened to something after I've written it - not only whether there have been any comments, but whether anyone has even read it.
And when inputting stories, provide a way for me to provide links to go with it, if appropriate. As I said before, encouraging hacks to set up delicious accounts is all very well, but it won't happen.
I also have my doubts about how many of our readers actually use services like delicious. You end up with a situation where newspapers embrace these services because we think readers want us to, and then try to educate our readers on how to use them.
Links can be very useful with a story, but they should simply be placed on our websites next to the story itself, as the BBC does already.
The debate I referred to earlier on Jo Geary's blog has taken in a lot of issues, but one of them I think boils down to the idea that journalists need to take the reins themselves, as the businesses they work for are incapable of providing leadership (and I'm not suggesting that's Jo's view, just one of the views that seems to have emerged from the many comments and blog posts from various people).
I don't agree with that. We are seeing leadership from Trinity Mirror and, in any case, I believe that's where it has to come from.
My advice to any newspaper business hoping to get journalists to embrace new media is this:
The Birmingham Post's big relaunch takes place on Monday, when the first edition of the new compact paper comes out. There's also a spanking new website to go with it, although I'm not certain whether that is launched on the same day.
What isn't quite in place yet is the new editorial structure to go alongside the more visible changes. Rather than having three newsdesks, with three sets of reporters, there will be one, to cover the Birmingham Post, Birmingham Mail and Sunday Mercury.
So instead of a Post reporter writing a Post story, you have a BPM Media reporter - the business' new name - writing a story which could end up in any of the papers. They send it to newsdesk, and the news editors decide where to put it.
The aim is to make better use of economies of scale, so that staff are able to get more done by avoiding duplication. To put it another way, each paper now has more staff than it used to - albeit shared with the rest of the business - and should be able to do a better job of reporting the news.
I'd been under the impression that Birmingham was the first Trinity Mirror operation to go down this road, but I'm told by a friend on the Western Mail that they've already done something similar in Wales.
In any case, this is the way of the future for the company - not something we've been told, just my prediction - so colleagues in Liverpool and Newcastle might want to pay attention!
Jo Geary has prompted a debate on her blog with a post lamenting the fact that "journalists don't know their own business".
She writes: "After all, if we don't understand how our market is created, nor how we best make money out of it, then I would argue we know little about serving it properly."
She argues that the National Union of Journalists should adopt "a pro-active policy of educating members and providing them with access to financial information on their companies".
I wrote a comment, which I re-post here (as it was really far too long to be a comment). It's partly a response to other comments from Jo's readers, which included suggestions that journalists should learn about search engine optimisation - how to get a high ranking in Google - and the usual NUJ bashing.
By the way, the profit margin on Trinity Mirror's regionals (such as the ones I work for) was 21 per cent in the last financial year, significantly down from 25.6 per cent previously, but actually pretty good by the standards of most businesses, surely?
There are two issues here. One is how the internet changes the way they do their jobs, which is basically to gather and pass on information and ideas. Jeff Jarvis' blog gives one very simple and clear example - it could now mean providing links, in some cases.
The second issue, which is separate, is how we create a business model which pays our wages.
Good journalism which makes the best use of all the media available to us (I mean that one brand, such as the newspaper I work for, uses various media, with print being one of them) does not necessarily pay the bills in today's world.
Teaching journalists about search engine optimisation and ‘social media', or improving their work in other ways, won't change that - will it?
One of my favourite stories of recent days didn't quite make the grade in the Birmingham Post and got chopped down to 100 words or so - and can't even be found on the website.
That may very well be the fate it deserves, but by the power of the Interweb I present it here anyway, as I liked it. The MP concerned told the House of Commons that this was "serious monkey business".
Cheeta the chimpanzee should receive an Oscar for his role in films and television shows including the Tarzan movies, according to a West Midlands MP.
Mark Pritchard wants the 76-year old animal to receive recognition in order to raise awareness of thousands of primates kept as pets.
Mr Pritchard (Con The Wrekin) launched a campaign to win an honorary Oscar for Cheeta as he presented proposals to change the law in the House of Commons.
He submitted a Bill which would make it illegal to trade primates, such as monkeys, apes or lemurs, as pets.
He said: "Keeping primates as pets is like something from Victorian times.
"It is outdated, and comes from a dark period for animal welfare in this country."
But the Victorians at least had the excuse that they did not realise that many primates were in danger of extinction in their natural habitat, he said.
Even owners who tried to take good care of primate pets were unlikely to be able to provide a suitable environment, he said.
"It is estimated that up to 3,000 primates are currently being kept as pets in the United Kingdom.
"Many are kept in cruel and cramped conditions, but by no means all of them.
"But whatever their captive conditions, these wild animals will always remain wild. These are animals that need large areas of vertical and horizontal space.
"They need certain room temperatures and humidity, long hours of natural sunlight and a varied and balanced diets."
Mr Pritchard asked MPs to back his campaign to ensure Cheeta received an Academy Award, commonly known as an Oscar, to publicise the condition of primates kept as pets.
Cheeta appeared in 12 Tarzan movies in the 1930s and 40s, and currently lives in retirement in California.
Personally I'd love a monkey as a pet. Does this make me a bad person?
Journalism
