Newspaper liveblogs local council meetings

Posted by Elizabeth Redman on February 9, 2010 at 12:12 PM

A newspaper in Manchester has been using various multimedia tools to liveblog council meetings from across the Greater Manchester Area, Press Gazette reports.

Meetings of the local authorities are attended by a reporter from the Manchester Evening News (MEN) or one of its sister weekly publications. Reporters then use Twitter to file updates minute-by-minute. Their updates are then streamed on MEN websites using CoverItLive technology, which allows liveblogging and other forms of real-time updating.

The MEN has so far used this to report on meetings of the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities and the Greater Manchester Police Authority. The newspaper wants to extend the service so that it can cover every full meeting held by ten local authorities across Greater Manchester.

Head of MEN Online Paul Gallagher said: "It's helping to further engage people who are interested in this sort of thing rather than getting mass audiences."

"What we are building up to is for a reader to be able to post a question on the blog and for the reporter to stand up in the meeting and say 'Mr X in Salford would like to ask...'"

The CoverItLive system is not only used to liveblog events. A newspaper in Northampton recently used it to liveblog its own newsroom, opening a discussion between readers and journalists about the process of reporting the news.

Reporting on local council meetings is particularly important in light of the recent controversy over council-run newspapers in the UK. One member of parliament called such publications "propaganda masquerading as independent newspapers" and another pointed to declining circulation of independent local papers in markets where the council paper has a high volume of free distribution. In this light, it is more important than ever for newspapers to hold their local governments accountable, and liveblogging is an innovative way to do so.

Source: Press Gazette