Fishburn Hedges

10.10.2011

Dan Roberts, the national news editor of The Guardian and a particularly nice guy, has come up with an innovation to make the process of setting the news agenda more open, posting the paper’s newslists online. He contrasts this innovation with Chancellor Bismark’s famous quote about the process of creating legislation being like sausage making – something best kept away from public scrutiny.

But these days, both sausage making and creating legislation are open to public scrutiny – up to a point. We can see all the public debates and no doubt have a tour around the Porkinson banger factory if we want. But there are many activities kept from public gaze for reasons of “commercial sensitivity” or “public interest”.

And so The Guardian’s publicly available newslist will not have anything that might be considered exclusive, for fear of rivals stealing their scoops. Also, we won’t be privy to the discussions around the newslist which, from my time as a news editor, I recall with very little affection, revealing as it did more pretention and ignorance than insight. 

For example, at one meeting the editor of the leading national asked on the 25^th anniversary of the Andrex puppy: “Is it the same puppy?” And at another, the comment editor shared a joke in ancient Greek with the editor and another senior colleague. And, at a third, we were introduced to a large photograph of a lady urinating and asked to give our opinions of it – knowing all the time the “artist” was a friend of the editor.

What would be interesting is for all the national newspapers to post their news lists, and for the running list from the Today programme and the forward events list from PA to also be published. And then the sources would be removed to see if you can guess which news list came from where.

After 20 years on national newspapers, I tend to get cynical. What The Guardian is doing with this innovation is trying to create a connection with their readers to cement a greater loyalty to the product. It is a forward-thinking innovation, but has to be seen in that context.

Posted by Jason Nisse