As reported by Journalism.co.uk last Tuesday, the Guardian has introduced a new set of blogging and commenting guidelines for its journalists.

The eight guidelines offer advice on “best practice” for Guardian journalists and writers when blogging for the site or responding to comments on Guardian.co.uk.

It’s something the site has been considering for a while – but we asked the Guardian’s head of digital engagement Meg Pickard to explain how the new guidelines were developed:

For a couple of years now we’ve had a dedicated intranet site (“Really Social Media”) providing training, resources, case studies, best practices and guidelines for digital engagement (covering social media, blogging, commenting and so on), to be used by staff in conjunction with established company policies about internet use. As this is an evolving field, we regularly update the guidelines to reflect best current knowledge and to help staff navigate the changing landscape of sites/services, skills and situations.

During the summer, the editorial management team worked on the current refresh, which includes interaction guidelines, as well as legal notes and editorial best practice. When publishing the updated guidelines internally at the Guardian, we thought it would be interesting and appropriate to be transparent with readers about the advice we’re giving to staff members, so we published them on guardian.co.uk as well, as part of our extensive and recently relaunched info section.