The transparent newsroom

Is it hideously solipsistic to devote part of the Post’s blog space to discussions of our editorial decision-making processes? Who really wants to eavesdrop on the inane chatter that informs our daily grind, and would readers want to challenge us on our reasons for including or excluding certain stories and issues?

Neil Benson, the editorial director of Trinity Mirror’s regional newspapers – which includes The Birmingham Post – recently questioned whether the group’s editors were really signed up to the principle of interactivity. Despite our furious nodding at Neil’s regular forums, where such issues are addressed, Neil suspects we’d all rather the audience accept what we’ve been broadcasting at them for years – and keep their views to themselves.

I think Neil’s right to throw out the challenge. It’s hard enough agreeing on the news agenda when there’s only half a dozen of us sitting around The Post’s daily conference table. And if there’s disagreement, I just play the editor’s trump card (it’s a kind of feudalism in this business). Imagine the chaos if I had to take into account what you lot think.

Until we got our teeth into the new Post site, I think I have been guilty of rather sniffily dismissing the issue of interactivity as one only for my tabloid colleagues. Let them encourage Jean from Scunthorpe air her views on J-Lo’s babies, or Wayne from Teesside share a video of his mates joyriding – that’s not something The Post need worry itself with. Surely our readers are far too busy making money or ruling the city to engage in this kind of low-level drivel?

But surely if The Post is to secure its reputation as the paper that holds others to account by championing transparency, then it needs to heed its own rules – particularly as it moves into a medium which is about nothing if not the free exchange of information. We pass judgement daily on the decisions of others – and the consequences of those decisions. Why not help others judge ours?

Other papers are making brave steps towards opening up and making themselves more accountable the editorial process.

Chief amongst these is the Spokesman Review in the US, a family owned daily paper. Its editor Steve Smith blogs about the issues and decisions behind his newspaper’s coverage in a section labelled News is a Conversation. He discusses current stories and the paper’s coverage of them against the benchmark of the title’s published core values.

This is a tremendously brave approach. But it goes further: he streams the twice daily news conferences, publishes the newslist, and invites readers’ challenges.

Now, I don’t know to what extent all this has helped or hindered the Spokesman Review’s performance, but it seems to me that conducted honestly, this is a surefire way to build trust, and with trust comes loyalty, and with that audiences.

So how far should The Post go? This blog will evolve into something akin to Steve’s ‘News is a Conversation’ section (and I’ll be moving it from WordPress across to our own bespoke MoveableType platform next week), but what else should we do?

I’m interested in your comments, but remember – I am the feudal overlord.

Some other newsroom blogs from around Trinity Mirror:

• Graeme Whitfield: Newcastle Journal newsroom insights

• Adrian Seal: searingly honest warts and all insight into the life of a weekly newspaper editor

• And here’s Ali Machray from the Liverpool Echo dissing rainy Birmingham
• And my Birmingham Mail colleague Steve Dyson’s. An active and very conversational blog, I know Steve’s has become one of the hotspots on the new Mail site

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