Should newspapers limit subject matter of their bloggers?

Roshan Doug’s blog post ‘Check-out desk woman and Saddam Hussein’ for the Birmingham Post has been causing a stir on the site. Whether you agree or sympathise with Doug’s post, the readers’ reaction raises questions over what guidelines or control the title should exercise over the topics their bloggers write about.

Reporter and overseer of the Post’s blogs Joanna Geary has raised the question via Twitter:

This would be a moderation headache for staff working on a paper and would curtail many of the benefits of having a blogging platform in the first place. Doug’s post has certainly got the conversation going and limiting posts could lead to staler content.

But how much control can the publisher relinquish without endangering their reputation or causing grievous offense to its readership?

Tags: Joanna Geary, Roshan Doug

The European News Interactivity Index

Nicolas Kayser-Bril, contributor to the Online Journalism Blog and Observatoire des Media, has created an index of the interactive tools used by European news websites.

The index compares and contrasts which media organisations make use of tools such as Twitter, mobile alerts and social networks, as well as noting their policy on user registration for interactive services.

News sites from the UK and France, to Macedonia and Hungary are featured - entries for additional organisations should be submitted to nicolas@observatoiredesmedias.com.

Below is the index’s comparison of interactive features used by Sky’s site vs Guardian.co.uk:

The project is an extension of the work by Birmingham Post reporter and blogger Joanna Geary, who looked at the use of interactive tools by business news sites.

Tags: france, Guardian.co.uk, Hungary, Joanna Geary, Macedonia, media organisations, Nicolas Kayser-Bril, Online Journalism blog, social networks, United Kingdom

New look for Birmingham Post website

Trinity Mirror are to revamp the Birmingham Post’s website, according to reporter on the paper Joanna Geary - who is part of the development team for the new site.

Geary opened up the floor to readers of her blog to suggest features for the redeveloped website, taking their ideas to a meeting yesterday with management staff working on the project.

In an updated blog post, Geary wrote the following on some initial thoughts on the relaunch: “We’ve got a nice head start in that we will be using a similar template to other papers in the group such as the Liverpool Post, Liverpool Echo, Daily Post (Wales) and Daily Record (Scotland). Ours, however, will have a very distinct Birmingham Post feel.”

Tags: Joanna Geary, Scotland, Trinity Mirror, Wales