Apology for blocking citicism of the Mercury

ajnorman has taken me to task over one of my earlier posts about freedom of speech in which I said that we moderate posts on thisisleicestershire after they show up on the website, 'removing only those which we think create a legal issue or which are in some other way offensive.'

This is what he/she says:

'Or critical of the way the newspaper has covered a story. I don't know who does your moderating, but one of the things that has turned me away from engaging with the website is that even mild criticism of the paper is removed instantly, however well-justified, while all sorts of racist bile is left on the site (see all the pro-BNP comments today, or the comments on any article to do with travellers, for example).'

Firstly, let me apologise. I am sorry that we have removed any comment that was critical of the way the Mercury has covered any story, unless that criticism contained baseless personal criticism of a member of staff. I am assuming in this case that it did not since ajnorman says that we remove even mild criticism.

I promise you that is not my policy. I am happy to allow criticism of the newspaper - the guidance I have given to my staff since the day I arrived in February is that they should engage with readers who have an issue with our coverage. That is, if there is criticism of us on our site, leave it there and explain our stance and, if we got it wrong, apologise and correct it. We're not infallible, we make mistakes, sometimes factual sometimes on matters of judgement. As I said, if that has not been ajnorman's experience since I arrived, I'm sorry and, if you can let me have more details, I will look into your complaint more thoroughly. I would have replied directly to you, but I don't have any contact details.

In the meantime, I will remind those who moderate our site, of the way I feel.

I'll also take another look at your point about us allowing 'racist bile' in case we have misjudged that as well.

UPDATE 10.48pm: Checked for racist bile - ajnorman was right. I've taken the lot down. A few BNP supporters masquerading as lots of different people stimulating a thread that looked as if more and more people said they would vote BNP. Once I'd removed that, the thread made no sense, so had to take the rest down to.

I hate it when we get it that wrong. Sorry. (Stands back and waits for hate storm!)

Readers' letters and that MP

Most of my day today was spent in a meeting with Northcliffe's senior editors having what was described as a robust discussion around our print and digital strategies. One thing you can always say about editors is that they are incredibly passionate about what they do ... and you could also say that anyone trying to get general agreement from them on anything has a task akin to herding cats!

The few moments that I did spend in the newsroom of the Mercury was spent going through all the letters and emails submitted by our readers for publication in the paper. I'm guessing, but I've probably read through somewhere in the region of 60 today which is probably pretty typical of the numbers we see every day. More than half of these will have been submitted by snail mail, although we do see an increasing number arriving through our inboxes.

The advantage of spending a bit of time doing this task is that it does let me see what our readers have got on their minds.

What surprised me today was that, unlike the editors, a huge percentage of readers agreed with each other on the main topic of conversation. More than half of the letters came from people who were still exercised by the Keith Vaz allowance claims ... and I didn't see one letter of support. I did see one that didn't like Mr Vaz very much, but felt that the Mercury was a Tory rag which was revelling in putting him through the wringer.

We're not. Well, not entirely.

What I mean is that we do not support the Conservative Party. In fact, the Mercury doesn't support any political party and won't while I'm editor. We'll call it as we see it on individual issues. Obviously with Labour in power at both a local city council level and nationally, we are more likely to be seen criticising them than the Tories simply because they are doing more. But you will equally see us supporting some decisions of the city council - see this or this (and indeed tomorrow's editorial which supports work being done to clamp down on noisy neighbours).

So, we're not a Tory rag, but are we a rag? You know what, I don't mind that term as it is normally used in the context of the 'local rag' and, while it might be mildly insulting, it is also sort of affectionate ... it's the sort of mild insult you might use about a close friend! And, above all, I like people to comment on the paper - and this blog - because it means that we are doing something worth commenting on and I'd hate for the paper to fade into irrelevance.

Writing the leader column

The last thing I did before leaving the office tonight was to write the leader column for tomorrow's Leicester Mercury. Unlike most national papers we don't have a specialist opinion writer and it is usually written by me or the deputy editor, Richard Bettsworth.

You may have noticed from various previous posts on this blog that I am currently exercised by an uneasy feeling with the way things operate in Leicester and tomorrow's opinion column reflects this.

Here's a sneak preview:

It has become increasingly clear over recent days that the scandal surrounding MPs’ allowances is not simply going to fade away. The anger expressed by voters everywhere demands fundamental change. Tory leader David Cameron continues to attempt to wrestle the initiative away from Gordon Brown by suggesting changes that he hopes will restore some confidence in Parliament. Today he has suggested moving power away from London back to local communities.

On the face of it, we would support such a change. Too much local policy is effectively set in Westminster by the Government issuing public targets for local councils and then using funding threats and restrictions to force the local authorities to comply.

However, many local councils have a pretty poor record when it comes to openness and changes in the way they operate over the past decade have meant that more and more decisions are taken behind closed doors ...

All councils pay lip service to open government. They all claim that they are transparent and that local voters can see for themselves how decisions are made, but actions often do not match the rhetoric ... If Mr Cameron is going to send more power back to our local councils, he will also have to reform they way they work.

I'll try to blog soon on the difference between the newspaper's opinion column (the newspaper's stance on a given issue) and this blog (the Editor's opinion on various issues), especially as they will often, but not always, be similar.

Dirty tricks? But it's all within the rules! Sound familiar?

The Leicester Mercury's front page article on Saturday outlined alleged dirty tricks involving the Tory administration at Leicestershire County Council ahead of next month's elections.

We have a whole series of emails between an independent Conservative candidate and the Tory leader and deputy leader of the council after which the independent candidate decides to withdraw from the election.

In a nutshell, the candidate, Simon Jones, put himself up to fight against the council's deputy leader because the community he lives in, Breedon on the Hill, is in the middle of a long-standing - and possibly very expensive - High Court battle with the council over a community hall in the village. In the emails, the leader of the council, Councillor David Parsons, promises that a new community hall will be built. The deputy leader, Councillor Nicholas Rushton, wrote to Mr Jones to say: 'I sincerely hope that you will now withdraw your candidacy.' Mr Jones withdrew.

In today's Mercury, the Tories' prospective parliamentary candidate for the area, Andrew Brigden, describes a police investigation into the matter as a complete wast of time. Mr Bridgen says the investigation is “something about nothing”... “To call it election dirty tricks is ridiculous. I think for a politician standing for election to pledge there will be a replacement of the facility if it is removed is quite legitimate.”

The paperwork leaked to the Mercury shows a trail of e-mails starting on May 11, following a conversation between the council's deputy leader, Councillor Nicholas Rushton, and Simon Jones, who are contesting the same Valley seat in the county council elections.

• Mr Jones suggests to Coun Rushton that they should meet and writes: "You say that you are prepared to put your energies behind a campaign to get things brought to a conclusion, and that you will guarantee that a community building will be constructed whatever the outcome of legal proceedings.
• "If we can achieve this together then fantastic."
• Later that day, Coun Rushton replies: "Great news! Should get something to you this evening from David Parsons (the leader of the council). It will promise all you want."
• Later on May 11, council leader David Parsons writes to Simon Jones and Coun Rushton: "I am happy to give my personal commitment and that of the administration at County Hall to the provision of new community facilities at Breedon within the lifetime of the next council."
• Coun Rushton also writes to Simon Jones saying: "I sincerely hope that you will now withdraw your candidacy and we can all move forward united and together."
• The next morning, Simon Jones writes to Coun Rushton saying that he is ready withdraw his candidacy.
• Coun Rushton replied to Simon Jones saying: "You have a written guarantee from me and the leader that a new facility will be delivered."

I'm no election law specialist so I have no idea whether or not anything illegal has happened, but clearly somebody at the county council is not happy with what went on - according to the police, it wasn't an opposition councillor who reported the issue to them, it was 'the county council.'

And, in the middle of the MPs' expenses scandal where the public has been so outraged by the defence that claims were 'within the rules', it is hard not to reach the conclusion that whether or not the law has been broken in Breedon, what happened was not right.

Looking after the pennies ...

One of my all-time favourite journalism books is Prof John Paulos' 'A Mathematician Reads the Newspapers', a sometimes quirky review of the way journalists pass on their misunderstanding of numbers to their readers.

I was reminded of this when reading Stuart Glendinning Hall's post on how to pay special attention to your top community contributors which reports on an HP Labs study which, in turn, concludes that people's propensity to keep participating increases with the more they contribute. The paper demonstrates that submitters who stop receiving attention tend to stop contributing, while prolific contributors attract an ever increasing number of followers and their attention in a feedback loop.

Well, anyway, that's what the paper claims.

The conclusion is interesting - if perhaps a little predictable - but it was the mathematical computations that led to the conclusions which brought Prof Paulos' book to mind. The learned prof argues that journalists' grasp of fairly simple maths is so poor that articles are often riddled with ridiculous mistakes. While that is undoubtedly true, the HP Labs documents shows conversely that mathematicians and other experts often make lousy communicators and they usually need a journalist to misunderstand the maths, but get the message across!

Stuart doesn't give away a lot about himself in his online profile, but his post reads as if he understands the maths behind the HP paper. Me? I read the paper, but skipped the maths which lost me in the first few lines!

The gentleman's club which leads to poor reporting

Peter Preston writes an excellent article in today's Observer questioning how the MPs' expenses scandal could have gone on for so long under the noses of the lobby correspondents which newspapers pay to cover Parliament full-time.

Disclosure: the Leicester Mercury has a lobby correspondent. We share him with Northcliffe's other Midlands titles (including Nottingham and Derby). He is based full-time in the Houses of Parliament, but works under the direction of the local Editors, including me.

Preston asks: 'Didn't anyone, updating his flipping contacts list, ask why Hazel Blears was always on the move? Why the chancellor's home telephone number kept changing? How Hon Members on £64,000 a year could afford to clear their moats, build duck islands or tackle dry rot 100 miles from Luton?'

Further down he says: 'They're expert, self-regulated members of one gentlemen's club, monitoring another one. They need to cultivate sources, buy drinks and keep onside to keep the chat coming. They are part of the institution, in a way.'

And then: 'But editors back at their desks are surely entitled to ask themselves a few questions now. Does the lobby - its briefings, its access, its exclusivities - still deliver the goods I need? If everything else is changing, can the snug set-up that missed the story be left untouched? '

He has a point. And I intend to ask the questions.

But it is a difficult situation and one that journalists come across all the time - striking the balance between having a relationship that allows mutual trust and access to 'exclusive' stories with the need to be detached enough to ask the difficult question or report the fact that will obviously upset and anger your 'contact'.

The lobby is not the only place where this issue exists.

Take football reporting. The Mercury's long-serving football writer Bill Anderson has just retired. When we reported this in the paper - and online - readers reacted by wishing Bill luck in his retirement, but rather harshly (in my opinion) criticising him for his closeness to the club. Even Bill recognised that supporters often felt he had been at a different game from them. But Bill probably spent more time with the club than he spent in the office of the Mercury and, inevitably, if you spend that much time with people, you build a relationship, even friendship. It is never easy to be very critical of friends and it is even more difficult to be critical in public. What is the alternative? The football writer relies on contact with players, the manager and the club and knows that it will take little to upset that relationship, leaving him out in the cold with nobody to talk to. It's easy for the Sun to parachute somebody into Leicester, be as critical as they like about the club, and then disappear back to London without having to care about the fact that they might want to ask about team news or transfers the next day. Many of our readers have a seemingly insatiable appetite for news about Leicester City and our football writer is expected to find stories every day. Yes, every day. Even in the summer when all the players and the manager are away on holiday. How easy is that if you don't have their mobile phone numbers?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to defend this sort of journalism, I'm just explaining why I think it happens.

Personally, I think it is about the relationship you build with your contacts. I think you have to have the discussion with them about 'bad' news and why you will report it. My own experience is that most people understand this and the more you talk about it, the easier it is to get through difficult issues.

In the short time that I have been in Leicester, I've been impressed with the level of partnership in the city, between public and private sector and between both of these and the various faith organisations - it's clearly a big part of what makes the city tick and I wouldn't want to do anything to undermine it. But I've also expressed some concern about what I see as a lack of scrutiny, about how many decisions are made behind closed doors and are not seen by the public until they have been carefully sanitised and wrapped up in neat little packages, with everyone sharing the same point of view. It makes me uneasy.

So, the question posed by Peter Preston needs asking not just about our lobby correspondent, but about all our reporters. And me.

Local politics dominate - Vaz, Taylor and the county council

At the risk of being boring, I'm going to mention Keith Vaz again. He's really not very happy with me or the Leicester Mercury and to make his point he has written another, much longer, open letter to our readers explaining how he feels we have been unfair to him. I'm obviously happy to publish that letter - see the Mercury tomorrow (Saturday) for the letter in full, unedited and without comment.

The key to his argument is that we have concentrated unreasonably on the expense scandal when there was much more important news about him to cover, including work that he has done to help reverse the Government stance on the Ghurkas, the publishing of a 400 page report on human trafficking, interviewing the Metropolitan Police commissioner and speaking eight times in Parliament.

He concludes by saying that while he accepts that it is 'absolutely legitimate' for the paper to inquire into the question of the expense and allowance claims, 'it is right that that you should be fair.' I agree. We should be fair. I guess our readers will decide whether or not we have been.

While Mr Vaz has been in the public spotlight, his colleague in North West Leicestershire, David Taylor, has not. But tomorrow, we have full details of Mr Taylor's expense claims ... and they come to a very similar amount as those of Mr Vaz, almost £80,000.

To give him credit, we have the full details because Mr Taylor brought them to us today. Some of the details are not pretty and he's aware that some peope will be very angry about his claims. Again, you can see it in tomorrow's Mercury.

But neither of these stories has made it to the front as we feel there is an even more important local policitical story - police investigations into alleged dirty tricks in the upcoming county council elections.

That Keith Vaz open letter

I suggested last night that the reaction to Mr Vaz's open letter in the Leicester Mercury might not be great. We received 72 comments, one of which was largely supportive of the MP and another of which accused the Mercury of racism in our coverage of the issue - the rest were as you might expect!

Free speech - Part 2

Interesting to see that 'community guru' Patrick O'Keefe has commented on my earlier post on the problems we have around reader comments on the McCann family. He picked up on Stuart Glendinning Hall's blog reference to my post and I think he said he agreed with what I'd said.

He said: "The important thing is to cultivate the proper community that fits within whatever your looking to accomplish or what your brand is. Do you want a website where people can’t feel safe browsing from work or around their family? There is no right answer there, just what your audience is. If so, there are things you’ll need to remove. Do you want a website that is riddled with personal attacks and bitter, nasty arguments? Again, no right answer, but whatever you decide will require maintenance."

For more, visit Stuart's blog.

Newspaper profit details

The Leicester Mercury is part of the Northcliffe Media Group, which in turn is part of the Daily Mail and General Trust - owners of, amongst other things, The Daily Mail.

I've mentioned elsewhere that times are tough in the newspaper business at the moment, just how tough can be seen from today's half year figures from our parent company. See here for the Guardian's take on our performance, or here for the group's announcement (you'll need to scroll down to find Northcliffe Media details). UPDATE: Press Gazette has a more Northcliffe-centred version.

It's not pretty and we've had to make some unpleasant decisions ... and we're not out of the woods yet.

Why the secrecy?

Finally, the city council has come out and said that it will fund the Special Olympics in Leicester with up to £1m of taxpayers money, but why did it take so long to say it?

Ever since I arrived in the city three months ago, it has been clear that there was a large hole in the funding plans for the games. In only my second week I met with a representative of the organisers who bubbled with enthusiasm for the 'best games ever' and talked about their aspirations for a 'world class' event, but squirmed horribly when I asked about the funding. They had hoped for a £2m injection from Visa, but it had not been forthcoming. Over the next couple of weeks I spoke to several people about the funding. Nobody seemed that keen to talk about it, but nobody seemed that bothered about it either - it was clear that somebody had said they would underwrite the costs and it didn't take much to work out that it was the city council, but nobody would confirm it officially.

Why not? Well, I'm guessing that everybody was worried that if the council said out loud that it would fund the games, any slim hopes of getting anybody else to put money in would just disappear. At the time, the organisers were still talking about commercial sponsorship, even though the games were no more than a dozen weeks away, but apart from the sterling efforts of the Lord Mayor, it was pretty clear that nothing was going to be forthcoming.

I don't have a problem with the city council putting the money in. In fact, I think it was the right thing to do (and we've said so in our leader column in today's Mercury), but I'm uneasy about the way it happened. £1m is a not an insignificant amount of money from an authority that worries about its income and feels the need to push up council tax at a time of deflation and recession. So where will the money come from? Which departments or projects will lose out?

Everyone, whatever business they are in, knows that it is a matter of priorities - the council has a finite amount of money, it has to set priorities. Having decided the games are a priority (a decision we support) I'd like to see the discussion around where the money is coming from. I don't like the fact that these sort of discussions go on increasingly behind closed doors away from the public gaze. This is not an issue confined to the city council, local authorities across the land have switched from the old committee system to a new cabinet controlled form of government. In itself, that didn't need to mean that there was much less public debate, but our councils have taken the opportunity to make sure that this was the outcome.

And perhaps there is a bigger lesson to be learned from this. It's important that the city goes into major decisions with its eyes wide open. Take the bid to make Leicester a host city if England win the right to host the 2018 World Cup. On the face of it, this looks like a fantastic opportunity and the Mercury supports the bid. But, the first piece of work that needs doing - and it is already underway and may well cost the best part of £100,000 - is to gather a thorough understanding of what might be involved. We already know that the Walkers stadium will need to be expanded. Mr Mandaric is on record as saying that this would happen if Leicester City are promoted into the top division (and look like staying there?), but what if they are not promoted or, as happens with many clubs, they yo-yo in and out of the top division while they try to establish themselves? Will we be in the same position as we are with the Special Olympics where we really have no choice but to go through with the event? Who will pay to enlarge the stadium if Leicester City do not? How much other work will need to be done in terms of infrastucture around the city to handle the expected influx of fans?

None of this means that Leicester should not be looking at making a bid to be a host city, but there should be a full and public discussion about the possible cost as well as the undoubted upside that the tournament would bring.

Keith Vaz open letter to Mercury readers.

Oh dear, oh dear. After more than a week chasing round after Leicester East MP Keith Vaz, we have finally managed to persuade him to respond to the rage that has swept the country over MPs' expense claims. You can read the letter in full, unedited, in tomorrow's Mercury (ie Thursday).

I fear his response will not satisfy everyone (anyone?).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he takes a swipe at the Mercury. We've concentrated too much on this single issue: 'From the moment this information was published in another newspaper I have responded. My office deals regularly with the local press.

'The problem is the coverage of politics has declined in both the national and local press. In the past week, I have been involved in a number of issues including Gurkhas, Sri Lanka, policing and human trafficking. Sadly, none of this has been reported locally.'

Mea culpa. Let's see how our readers react tomorrow.

Interestingly, another leading local politician rang me only yesterday to thank us for treating the upcoming county council elections seriously, highlighting the issues that are being presented on the doorstep and how each party intends to deal with them.

Free speech?

One very irate reader - probably ex-reader - emailed me with a bitter complaint about the Mercury's 'decision to deny freedom of speech' to our readers.

She wrote: 'I am of course referring to your apparent decision to omit an 'add comment' facility for the most recent story about the McCanns ... the British media's generally misplaced sympathy for the McCanns and lack of ability to acknowledge that the parents deserve to be criticised (and convicted) for their negligence makes me suspicious that this a deliberate move by the Mercury to gag their readers. We should be proud of our right of free speech in this country and if you have made the decision to exercise selective censorship you should be thoroughly ashamed of yourselves. Yours disgustedly etc'

I'm not convinced the name or email address supplied were genuine, but she was clearly very angry. It is a very difficult area for us - we give our readers the ability to comment on articles on our website without requiring them to register and without us putting in any form of pre-moderation (ie we moderate posts after they show up on the website, removing those which we think create a legal issue or which are in some other way offensive).

We certainly allow things on to the website which we would not allow into the paper - I guess we think it is clear that it is the opinion of the reader and not something that we would necessarily agree with. But we do have to draw the line somewhere. The problem with legal issues is that we are legally responsible for our website and we are more likely to be sued than the comment writer - I don't think it is clear cut, but the risk is there for us. I don't think too many people would expect us to accept clearly libellous posts.

But there are those comments which we remove for other less easily defined reasons and this is the area where we run into trouble with disgruntled posters. There are things that no right-minded person is going to object to us removing: racism and homophobia, for example. Personal insults would not generally be accepted, but we have let some pretty nasty comments about Keith Vaz and Alan Duncan go over the past week or so. The fact that they put themselves into the public eye probably means that we allow our posters more freedom than we might if the subject was simply Joe Public.

So what about the McCanns? It is true that we don't allow comments on any stories about Maddy or her parents. Why is that? We used to allow posts, but there is a small group of people out there who are convinced that they know what happened to Maddy - they have no evidence, but they are happy to make their allegations publicly and forcefully. Every time we have allowed comments on our stories about this family, the articles have become swamped with baseless accusations.

Of course, our decision to close down the comments has meant that we are preventing reasonable people from using our website to have perfectly reasonable discussions about the case - in fact, the complainant I quote above, accuses the McCanns of negligence, presumably because the children were left alone at night. You may or may not agree with this opinion, but it an opinion that a reasonable person might hold. To that extent, our complainant is right, we are suppressing free speech.

However, the right to free speech comes with a responsibility and the bile that is poured out by a minority on this issue, leaves us with little choice. I don't like the decision, but I don't see what else we can do without using resources we don't have to moderate more quickly. I am considering changing our comment system to allow only those who have registered to comment. This, I think, would give our readers more commitment to the site and it would be much easier to build a system of trust that meant we didn't need to moderate at all or where the readers themselves could moderate.

But that's for the future. For now, I'm sticking with the ban even though it cost us a reader.

BNP - to report or not to report?

I spent much of the day getting to and from London for a meeting with Northcliffe's MD, Michael Pelosi, at the group's HQ in Kensington. In my previous job on the digital side of the business, I spent two or three days a week in the London office, but since arriving in Leicester three months ago, I've only been down twice, including today. The travelling certainly eats into your day, but it was a positive meeting.

However, it meant I spent little time 'editing' the paper today, but one or two interesting emails arrived. One of the questions we need to answer very quickly is what our stance is going to be on giving coverage to the BNP during the current Euro and county council election campaigns. Conventional wisdom has ruled that it was best to starve them of publicity, but I sense a change in the mood both inside and outside newspapers, suggesting that this has allowed the BNP to cloak itself in respectability and make outrageous claims that have gone unchallenged. I've read a couple of reports recently - including one from Leicester City Council which described the BNP's activities in the city as 'chilling' - which say that the best way to prevent the BNP gaining a foothold in local politics would be to show them up for what they are.

While I was out of the office today, my deputy, Richard Bettsworth sent out an email to senior members of our team at the Mercury outlining some of the BNP policies:

• Restoration of national service
• Deportation of illegal immigrants
• Voluntary repatriation of legal immigrants
• Clamp down on asylum seekers
• Introduction of corporal punishment for minor offences
• Capital punishment for murderers, terrorists and paedophiles
• Selective exclusion of foreign goods from Britain
• Withdrawal from Nato
• Withdrawal from EU
• Foreign aid given only to those countires which accept repatriation of immigrants

Richard asked for comments from our senior staff on what our position should be.

I wonder what our readers think? I'd be happy to hear from you.

2018 World Cup bid by Leicester?

No, I don't mean we'll be putting in a team to play against the likes of Brazil, Italy and England, but there's plenty of rumours flying around the web about the chances of Leicester bidding to be a host city should England win the right to host the whole tournament in 2018.

To find out what's really going on, see tomorrow's (Monday) Leicester Mercury.

Why we use the FoI to ask questions

Earlier, I commented on a post by Coun Rory Palmer on his blog where he mentioned the fact that the Leicester Mercury has put in a request under the Freedom of Information Act for details of expenses claimed by councillors on Leicester City Council.

This is what he said: 'From reading the journo's blogs it appears they will be (somewhat predictably) looking at councillor's expenses. According to Keith Perch's blog the Mercury has submitted a Freedom of Information request for councillor's expenses. Councillor's allowances and expenses are published each year by law but I fully recognise why the paper want to do this in the current climate. For the record, I am the first and to my understanding, the only councillor in Leicester to have published details of my expenses on my council website.'

Credit where credit is due - Coun Palmer does disclose his claims describing what money he gets and what he uses it for. You can see it here. To be fair, his claims are pretty modest, he gives details and it looks transparent - I wouldn't expect to discover anything alarming when we see the detail we've asked for.

However, experience tells me that this may not be the case with everyone. Coun Palmer says that the law demands that councillors allowances and expenses are published every year, but they won't be published in the sort of detail that we think they should. What we have asked for is a copy of all expense claims AND the receipts used to back up those claims. Why? Because the summary that is published can hide a multitude of sins.

Take this example. A few years ago, we asked to see the detailed receipts behind the expense claims of a chief constable - not in Leicestershire. We were interested in a trip he had made to the USA. On the face of it, everything on the expense claim looked fine: flights, a hotel, conference fees, meals etc. But a closer study of the receipts (which evidently nobody in the audit or finance department of the police authority had done) showed that he had actually claimed for two return flights to the US, most of the meals were for two people and we'd paid for a double room and a 'partner's' package at the conference. The chief constable had taken his wife with him and charged the ratepayers. It wasn't the only thing we found - he regularly took his wife to London with him on business trips - and the chief constable resigned.

I remember a senior councillor - not in Leicester - being jailed after we found him working in a burger van after he had claimed that he had been forced to give up work so that he could concentrate on council work, which, in turn, allowed him to claim more money from the council. A council leader who had to resign after many years in charge after we discovered that he was being paid by a company effectively owned by the council.

I could go on.

My point here is not that all councillors are corrupt. I don't believe that for a minute, but there are some bad apples out there. Even if we find nothing wrong with any of the claims made by our local councillors, it will have been a worthwhile exercise - look at what happened in Westminster where nobody was able to check! It is part of what newspapers do, we help to keep people honest.

One other point: Coun Palmer says it is predictable that we would make an FoI request for the details. What is more predictable is that the only way we are likely to see such details is through a formal request under the law. Despite all their claims that our councils believe in open government, we know that when we ask for this sort of information informally, there's no way that the council will respond by saying: 'Of course, come in and take a look.' No, they'll force us to go down the legal route and they'll take as long as possible to give us the answer.

Finally, earlier I used Twitter to say that I'd commented on Coun Palmer's blog ... except I called him Coun Taylor! I can think of a few politicians who would be happy for us to misname at the moment, but I don't suppose Coun Palmer is one of them! I'm sorry for the error.

Ok, you can make us look stupid

A couple of readers pointed out yesterday that we had carried a letter in the Mercury with a not very subtle reference to 'uphill gardening' - a not very pleasant homophobic insult - purporting to be a comment on expense claims by MP Alan Duncan. Fair enough, we were pretty stupid, or at least very naive, for not spotting the gag, but what was the point?

We try to give pretty free reign to our readers through both the letters in the paper and through the comments on our website. The letter would have been read by at least three people at the Mercury before it ended up in print and obviously none of them picked up on the reference even though it was pretty obvious once somebody had pointed it out. So what? It's a term that I hope none of them would use and it's possible that they may not even have heard it before (although, I had).

It reminds me of a website that I once saw which was put together by a group of people who spent their time trying to place as many small ads in a newspaper on a given day containing a pretty obscure smutty term. I'm sure it made them giggle, but I don't get it - I can't even remember what the term was, but I'd never heard it used and I'm sure the vast majority of the newspaper's readers hadn't either. What they'd managed to do was con someone in the advertising department into thinking it was a genuine ad. Well done. It's why I don't really like April Fool stories in newspapers - what do they prove? Apart, that is, from the fact that our readers tend to trust us and believe what we write. May be naively, we tend to trust our readers, especially in those parts of the newspaper where they write under their own name, rather than ours.

Anyway, the letter in the Mercury this week was pretty obnoxious and I apologise to both Alan Duncan and any reader who was offended. I'm sorry.

Beat bobby of the year update

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I'd been on the selection panel for the Leicester Mercury Community Police Officer of the Year ... and the winner has now been announced.

PC Harvey Watson was the unanimous choice of the panel and was nominated by more than 50 people, but I'm not sure our article (or that on the police website) give enough credit to the two other shortlisted officers, PCs Andy Raybould and Ian Hamilton - it was a very close call and I'm not sure that anyone could have argued if the results had been reversed!

A matter of trust

I visited Leicester College yesterday - 26,000 students, mostly from Leicester - to get an update from Maggie Galliers, the Principal. It has been a good week for the College with Princess Anne opening its new Abbey Park campus.

Ms Galliers mentioned a mutual acquaintance which reminded me of one of the cornerstones of the Leicester Mercury's success.

The person concerned is Mark Haysom, who recently resigned from his position as chief executive of the Learning and Skills Council following a debacle over funding which has left many colleges throughout Britain teetering on the brink of disaster after Government cash for building projects dried up after they had been started.

According to The Times newspaper, Mr Haysom received a payoff of 'more than £100,000, equal to six months salary.' That means he was paid more than £200,000 a year. Nice work if you can get it! He resigned because there had been failures in the way his organisation had managed its work, prompting one commenter to say he had received a 'payment for failure.'

Anyway, I digress. I knew Mr Haysom in a former life - he was managing director of the company in Cardiff which ran the South Wales Echo, the paper of which I was Editor in the mid-1990s. As managing director, he appointed me to my post and held the right to sack me as well - the Editor reported to the managing director. This can be a fairly uncomfortable postion to find yourself in as it then effectively gives the MD the final say on what the paper covers - should we run that expose of the local company that spends £10,000 a year advertising with us?

To be fair to Mr Haysom, although we met every week to discuss what I was doing and where I was taking the paper, he never once 'told' me to do anything. Nevertheless, the ultimate sanction remained with him. The South Wales Echo was owned by Trinity Mirror.

The Leicester Mercury, on the other hand, is part of Northcliffe Media Group and there is a fundamental difference in the way it runs its papers - the Editors are appointed by the group's managing director, Michael Pelosi. Mr Pelosi is one step removed from the day to day running of the paper.

This means that the local managing director, Steve Hollingsworth, the man with direct responsibility for the commercial success of the Mercury, does not get a direct say in the editorial policies and does not have the power to say: 'You can't run that article.'

As it happens, Steve and I go back a long way. We have worked together in other parts of the Northcliffe business over many years and we get along well personally as well as professionally. Steve knows that I value his input into what I'm doing editorially and we often discuss the direction in which I'm taking the paper and the changes I am making, but we both know where the line is drawn. I think this separation of church and state is one of the fundamental reasons for the Mercury's success - readers know they can trust the editorial to be honest and independent.

Upsetting all sides

Interesting blog from our education correspondent Ian Wishart on the perils of reporting on the controversial topic of the proposed closure of Riverside College - neither side in the affair is very happy witht he way Ian covered a recent council meeting. On balance, I think Ian probably got it right - he can only report what he sees and hears. The fact that he upset both sides of the argument probably means it was a fair report!