Excellent news for "smaller" blogging sites with a turnover of less than £2 million per annum and/or fewer than 10 employees, then, as it has been announced that such businesses will not be subject to the harsh financial damages due to be introduced under the new royal charter (see previous Editors Weblog article on reactions to the royal charter). Small companies who do not consider publishing news as the main part of their business will also be exempt.

Many of the small blogging sites in question will be heaving a huge sigh of relief in the wake of this government concession. Concerns had already been raised over the issue; outrage was widespread over the fact that small-scale bloggers would be subject to the harsh press regulation rules that were intended for the large news organisations responsible for the misconduct which lead to the Leveson inquiry in the first place. This exemption has been made in the form of a legislative amendment to the royal charter agreed upon by the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour parties. The amendment is due to go before the House of Commons for debate later today, 22April.

The agreement, which The Guardian lays out, will create a regulatory body to replace the Press Complaints Commission. The new group will be capable of directing apologies and corrections from news organizations and enforcing fines up to £1 million.

Critically, the regulator will be established through royal charter rather than law. However, a clause will be inserted to Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill that states that all royal charters cannot be amended without meeting the requirements laid out in the charters themselves. In this case, this charter will say that it cannot be modified without agreement from two-thirds of both houses of parliament.

While Prime Minister David Cameron maintains that “it’s not statutory underpinning,” Clegg and Miliband both address the clause as such. The clause makes no mention to Leveson or press regulation; rather, it encompasses all royal charters.

“What we wanted to avoid and have avoided is a press law,” Cameron said.

In the third instalment of our series of interviews with knowledgeable figures in the wake of the Leveson report, I sent some questions via email to Professor George Brock. Professor Brock has been the Head of the Department of Journalism at City University London since September 2009, and before that spent 28 years at The Times. He is a former President of the World Editors Forum.

Editors Weblog: Do you agree with Lord Justice Leveson that 'this is not, and cannot be characterised as, statutory regulation of the press'?

George Brock: It's not statutory regulation of the press but it does introduce an element of statute where none has operated before. That's not without risk.

Putting the issue of whether or not this regulation should be statutory, do you agree in principle with the sort of body that Leveson proposes to establish?  

Yes, I think it would be an improvement on what has gone before – most particularly the "arbitral arm" which would promise quicker, cheaper redress in cases of defamation of invasion of privacy. The length and cost of cases has been a major issue and tipped the scale too far in favour of big media.

‘Proustian’ is right. As predicted, Lord Justice Leveson’s report, published at 1.30pm this afternoon, is no pamphlet, running to four volumes and over 2,000 pages. What follows, therefore, is an attempt to briefly summarise the findings of the report and its reception amongst journalists and politicians, to be followed (possibly tomorrow) by a longer analysis of its recommendations.

The report itself breaks down into three main areas, the first of which concerns the relationship between the press and the police. Leveson finds that, whilst there was no endemic or institutionalised corruption in the force as a whole, several poor decisions were made during the original phone-hacking investigation. In response, the judge makes a number of minor recommendations, including the introduction of the practice of recording the interaction between police officers and journalists on a regular basis.