Are postcodes useful to journalists? If you belong in the new school of thought which says journalism is hyperlocal, tech-savvy and entrepreneurial, then the answer is yes, very.

Northcliffe’s experiments in hyperlocal journalism have been less about creating pure news portals and more about community services. If you look at any of its outlets – e.g. Berkhamsted People - its tagline is ‘Your place. Your people’. The focus being on community-driven news. Surely then, it makes sense for any new hyperlocal venture to embrace as many community enhancing tools as possible and collect them all in one place. Good UK examples are the websites created by MySociety (like FixMyStreet) and Ernest Marples Ltd (like the local planning alerts service). These sites make use of the Royal Mail’s postcode database to provide users with information about what’s happening around them – whether it’s a new building development or what your nearest pharmacy is. Useful information delivered to you, where previously you had to squint at that rain-drenched bit of paper pinned to the lamppost outside no. 20 to find out that they’d be building that new conservatory for the next six months….

Except that this all relies on postcode data….which is subject to copyright and therefore can’t be used by any Tom, Dick or Harry, even if it’s for useful community purposes. If you want to use the postcode database, you have to pay royalties to Royal Mail. This is how sat nav systems work.This means that low-cost, open ventures run by community driven entrepreneurs like those behind Ernest Marples Ltd., can’t use postcode data without getting nasty copyright infringement notifications from Royal Mail. Not having the means to challenge Royal Mail, Ernest Marples Ltd has ceased to provide any of its postcode-based services or API’s. So no pretty integrated tools for hyperlocal journalists.

The campaign against this stranglehold argues that Royal Mail (and indeed the Ordnance Survey which charges similar royalties for mapping information) are funded by the tax-payer. Therefore the tax-payer should have access to the information held by these companies. Hearteningly, Tom Watson MP has put forward an Early Day Motion:

That this House notes with concern the attempts of Royal Mail to restrict access to the postcode database for not-for-profit web services; further notes with alarm that this heavy-handed approach has led to not-for-profit websites which seek to provide essential services to the public being left unable to function; and calls on the Government to ensure that the database is made freely available to anyone for not-for-profit use, thus enabling citizen-focused projects to flourish and innovate.

Why not write to your MP and get them to sign it?

Yes, if you’re to believe journalist, doctor, crusader and Bad Science blogger Ben Goldacre.

There are some good write-ups of the debate between Science Minister Lord Drayson – who (quite cannily, given he was in a room full of science journalists) took the position that science coverage was getting better – and Ben Goldacre. A couple to check out are Zoe Corbyn’s at Times Higher Education and Basheera Khan’s over at Telegraph Blogs.

Better still, you can read my write up at journalism.co.uk – and have a look at my Flickr photos if you weren’t there.

Hats off. What a great headline and standfirst on that second lead. Enough to make any sub’s heart melt.

As you may have noticed, this blog has been quiet for a while. This is due to my MA project, which you can look at here. Surveillance News is a news and aggregation website about privacy, databases and surveillance in the UK, please check it out. If you’ve been interested in anything I blog about here, chances are you’ll be interested in this project too. Please leave comments, all feedback is much appreciated!

The Guardian loves it. FOI campaigners chase it. Even the Saturday Times Magazine devotes a page to it.

Data has long been the staple of mash-ups, news articles, bar charts and…just about anything really. It’s just another word for information, preferably neatly arranged in nice rows so we can make a colourful map of MPs’ expenses. Or a word cloud of Obama’s inauguration speech. Hurray! These pretty toys have given journalists a reason to live again!

Occasionally though, the toys achieve something useful, and since Wordle the New York Times’ revolutionary Faces of the Dead in 2006, data + journalism has gone mainstream. It’s largely taken off in the US where the launch of data.gov earlier this year prompted calls in the UK for the British Government to do the same. The idea being, simply, more transparency in government. You can look at air quality in California. Or average wage information in Utah.

The Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses coverage has proven beyond all reasonable doubt that transparency is a) needed and b) achievable through data. And so, yanked by the American dog-lead, the British government will indeed follow suit. Maybe. Hopefully.

Speaking at Open Tech 2009, Whitehall munchkins John Sheridan and Richard Stirling laid down the first draft for a UK version of data.gov. The only data available to them was traffic logs, but they hope to sell the idea to civil servants nonetheless. Currently the pair are looking for ways to spin this to Whitehall. “It works with most of the big departments if we say we can make public services better, and that we can do this by making information about a service available,” said Richard Stirling wryly.

Except – and even data enthusiasts immersed in numbers cannot fail to have noticed this – the UK is in the worst recession since 1991 and Brown can barely find the funds to let young people actually have the jobs they want. Let alone funding a database for some XKCD-shirted nerds to plot 10 years’ worth of traffic data on Many Eyes.

So it’s unlikely we’ll be using a British open databank any time this year, but they’re trying.

Why should you care?

Because although all of this is happening centrally in Whitehall at the moment, eventually local authorities will have to publish their stats. Don’t hold your breath though, even the US has only managed to get two states on board so far. Do you know how much of a pain in the arse these things are to get hold of usually? I wanted to find out the mobile phone expenditure of one local council, and had to wait three weeks for a reply. And that’s not even a difficult Freedom of Information request. It’s the same sort of thing as PlanningAlerts – because information is freely available, it’s a lot easier for the public to kick up a fuss about a planning application. Or traffic logs. If that’s your thing.

What next?

It’ll happen, eventually. The downside is obviously it will cost the taxpayer money just when the government is looking to cut back everywhere but yes, it may lead to a general improvement in services. Largely by you spotting something dubious on your local council’s databank and then shouting at them about it.

City University was recently blessed (or tarnished, depending on your viewpoint) with the frontrunners of online journalism, with Guido Fawkes, Slugger O’Toole, Turi Munthe (Demotix) and Potkin Azarmehr (a blogger for a secular Iran) all taking questions on the political blog.

Both Slugger and Guido were keen to point out they are no replacement for the mainstream media. But where Guido still saw value in newspapers to spread his political stories, Slugger seemed to think passionate bloggers might be the best source for niche information.

Guido said…

If you want to break a big story, you have to broadcast it. Sometimes I have to get a newspaper [in] and I work with a journalist to make a maximum impact. If I just did it myself, I find it gets picked up later. That’s one strategy; you do have to incorporate a broadcaster.

Mick Fealty/Slugger O’Toole said…

[We and the mainstream media] go about our business in a rather different way. Three or four years ago a Belfast news editor said, do you realise that Slugger sets the news agenda every morning? I didn’t want that kind of responsibility, but if that’s the case, that’s fine. I take an interest in stories which interest me.

A fun little addition to your Facebook experience, only really works in IE:

Click on a white space on Facebook, then with your keyboard press up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A and then hit enter. (It disappears once you log out).

Thanks to Will Foster for the five-minute wow factor

Weeks like this make me remember why I want to be a journalist. The British press has outdone itself in the MP’s expenses coverage. The Telegraph not only nailed the splash but provided a nice gallery of objects claimed on expenses, from iced gem biscuits to multiple houses.

The political response is hilarious, at first glance. Tragic, at the second. The immediate response to the leaks has been ‘whodunnit?’ because, rather conveniently, revealing whether Phil Woolas bought his wife a shirt with public money is information ‘held in confidence’. You can see the letter hinting at a police investigation at Guido Fawkes’ blog.

Publicly, MP’s sought to defend themselves over individual claims while spectacularly missing the point. It’s no longer about the details, but the disillusioning whole. It’s the snouts-in-the-trough mentality while the rest of us are being lectured to cut down our costs of living.

Meanwhile, the opposition has remained strangely quiet because…well, they’re all in on it. David Cameron has been quick to issue a general condemnation and assure the public the Tories’ expenses will surface sooner or later, but it’s not going to be pretty either.

Stuff to read and listen to:

8/5 - Telegraph: the original splash and follow-up material.

BBC Today programme: Harriet Harman floundering. Unfortunately I can’t find a clip of presenter Evan Davis reading the watery Tory response, saying that it was a ‘live issue’ and they wanted to see ‘how it would play out’, but that was gold too.

BBC online – MPs bite back, in a classic example of missing the point, and a nice summary of what is actually within the rules.

And finally…

Major kudos to journalist/Freedom of Information campaigner/superhero Heather Brooke. Tireless in her efforts to achieve greater political openness, including MPs expenses, she has been credited by Guido Fawkes for her part in this. She even inspired this humble FOI request….

Update: Even my ethics tutor Roy Greenslade acknowledges what a total legend she is.

Prince Charles has put away the Smythson and instead chosen to push his latest environmental message on YouTube, which seems to have become the new political equivalent of writing an open letter to the Times. Robin Williams, William n’ Harry, Daniel Craig and the Dalai Lama star among others in this plea to save the rainforests but, as the Times reports, the show is undoubtedly stolen by a certain amphibian extra.

The Webby Awards winners are in, with relatively few surprises I think. You can view the full list here, though this year’s 5 word speeches will have to wait til the awards ceremony which isn’t actually held until June. You’ll be able to watch it on YouTube though. Big ‘of the year’ wins were NIN frontman Trent Reznor for artist (woo!), comedian Jimmy Fallon for person, Twitter for breakout and Sarah Silverman for best actress. Would’ve picked Tina Fey myself, but whatever.

Worth checking out is the beautiful net-art category winner, Dreamgrove. Users are invited to ‘plant’ their dreams in a virtual field, while visitors can viewers these dreams categorised by mood, colour, name, word or date. People’s choice winner was the slightly sillier JacksonPollock.org, which can only be described as SPLAT.

Another art project, Jason Nelson’s Digital Oddities, topped the ‘weird’ category. I haven’t finished exploring it yet and I’ve yet to decide whether it’s beautiful or just odd. New media artist Jason Nelson assembles a patchwork collection of…well, new media art. Think of those Guardian Datablog visualisations but to the power of 100. There’s something for gamers, surrealists and amateur YouTubers. If that’s too taxing on the brain, there’s always the delightfully snarky FAIL blog.

In politics, the HuffPost took the main prize, while US political journalism site FactCheck was popular among the people. Wordle nabbed best use of typography after ridiculous overusage by the global press (including me). Just to remind you, here were my predictions:

Best newspaper

I predicted….New York Times to pip Guardian.

Winner Guardian

People’s choice New York Times (so half a point, surely)

Best news

I predicted…The Huffington Post

Winner BBC Worldwide

People’s choice BBC Worldwide

Podcast

I predicted…Guardian

Winner Guardian

People’s choice NPR Podcasts. No, no idea who they are either.

Jason Nelson’s award winner for weird.