Face to face with the BNP

Today's Leicester Mercury carries Adam Wakelin's interview with Leicestershire's first ever BNP county councillor, Graham Partner ... sitting directly opposite a full-page interview with the authority's first Asian councillor for more than 10 years, Jewel Miah.

As Adam says:

It’s tempting to present Graham and Jewel as polar opposites, the yin and yang of last week’s elections: fear versus hope, exclusion versus inclusion, division versus diversity, nasty versus nice.

The reality is probably a bit less black and white.

There was an understandable horror at the result when it was announced, but I hope that over the past few days, the Mercury has been able to put it into some sort of context - the BNP have not swept into power in the county on a wave of popular support ... a mix of circumstances allowed one councillor to be elected with little more than 1,000 votes and a wafer thin majority. Perhaps our focus should be on the changing attitudes that have seen a Bangladeshi immigrant, taunted with swastikas when he arrived in Loughborough, rise to be elected to represent those around him.

Even as I post this, I'm cringing!

I've taken this from the Jeff Jarvis blog, www.buzzmachine.com, so I know it's not going to be a sales pitch for newspapers in their current form, but it is a decent starting point for a conversation on what newspapers are for. I've talked about the problems we face on timing before, but this clip uses comedy to make the point far more forcefully.

Before I put forward my own thoughts, I thought it would be interesting to see what people had to say about this from a local newspaper's point of view.

Brian Greenberg comments on Jeff's blog:

Right tool for the job, folks. The past mission of the newspaper is not the future mission. News reporting wants to be immediate and online, and so it shall be. Investigative reporting, well-researched background pieces or profiles, long-term analyses - these can be online as well, but they can also be in print (newsprint, magazines, even books).

That's one thought, but what role - if any - do you see papers like the Leicester Mercury playing in the future?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
End Times
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

PS Brian Greenberg also has a great 'favourite quote' on his profile: “In theory, practice and theory are basically the same. In practice, they are not.”

Tackling the BNP in the paper

I always knew that dealing with the BNP would be difficult. Until now, we have mostly ignored them, but I sense that we have reached a tipping point and that it makes more sense now to challenge their policies and be sure that those voting for them know exactly what they are voting for.

I blogged about this dilemna - to report or to ignore - previously and received a reasonable amount of feedback, almost all of which came down on the side of reporting, with the notable exception of someone employed full-time to worry about social cohesion who felt that it was still best to ignore. With the election of a BNP county councillor in Coalville, we have decided that we cannot ignore the situation.

Tomorrow, we run a two-page thought piece on how it was that Coalville came to elect a BNP councillor. The two main parties both say that they didn't take the far-right organisation seriously enough and paid the penalty. The sitting Labour candidate admits that half way through the count when he knew he'd lost, he found himself in the peculiar position of hoping his Tory opponent would take the seat. It wasn't to be. It is easy to run away with the idea that the BNP candidate, Graham Partner, was swept to power by a huge protest vote. In fact, 62% of the electorate didn't vote for anyone and 73% of those who did vote, didn't vote for the BNP. The votes that were cast were spread amongst the candidates, leaving Mr Partner elected with a majority of 86. To be fair, the BNP is not the first party to benefit from our first-past-the-post electorial system which frequently sees people elected with a very small percentage of the possible vote.

Tomorrow's article by Lee Marlow makes for an interesting read, but it is the follow-up piece by Adam Wakelin that we are planning for Saturday which presents a bigger challenge for me as editor. Adam is a great writer, but his article is not an analysis, it's an interview with Mr Partner. I read an early draft this afternoon and was left feeling a little uneasy.

It's not that Adam hasn't asked the right questions or that he doesn't have the right background - he's got a great line about repatriation based round the fact that his own wife is 'brown-skinned' - it's more to do with the fact that Mr Partner is, in Adam's words, not a monster. Mr Partner describes BNP leader Nick Griffin as a prat, Hitler as a lunatic and he voted Labour most of his life before becoming interested in the BNP five years ago.

This all chimes with a discussion I had with the editor of the Stoke Sentinel whose paper circulates in an area which has elected a number of BNP councillors to its city council. He told me that it is very difficult because BNP councillors don't spend their time making racist comments, they spend their time being seen to do good things in the community. Of course, they don't want to spend their time talking about their racist policies and it's difficult to mention them every time you write about something they say which is not racist.

I've asked that Adam goes back on his feature and is more explicit about the racist policies and gets Mr Partner to talk more about them. In the meantime, I'm grateful that our lawyers have agreed that it is ok to say that the BNP are racist, fascist bigots ...

Teasing out a sale

It wasn't the best way to start the day. As I drove down one of Leicester's main arterial roads, I passed an ad for the Leicester Mercury which asked the question: 'Why did city vote Labour?'

The ad took the form of what we call a bill - the A2-sized posters that you see outside newsagents.

This particular bill reminded me of some training I did back in the days when reporters still used typewriters and the only computer in the building was the size of a room and had less memory than my iPhone! We were looking at how easy it is to write meaning one thing, only for readers to see something completely different. The example we were given was this:

GIANT
WAVES
DOWN
FUNNEL

Clearly intended to conjure up a picture of disaster at sea, I still can't see the words without imagining a giant of the jolly green variety happily waving down the funnel! It's easy to see at least four meanings of this single bill and I don't doubt there will be those who see many more.

I knew the story behind our bill this morning - our political correspondent Martin Robinson had been looking at why it was that Leicester bucked the national trend in the Euro elections, giving Labour an increased share of the vote in the city at a time when their share elsewhere had fallen significantly. (We concluded that the main reason was that at the last election something like 7,000 Labour supporters in Leicester had voted for the anti-war Respect party, which didn't put up a candidate this time round, leaving the voters to return to Labour).

My problem with the bill was that I read it as if it was castigating Leicester for voting Labour, as if we thought the voters had done something wrong. It might have been a question we would have asked if the BNP had won the vote.

May be I was looking for it because I hadn't liked one of the bills we wrote the day before which read:

POORLY
BOY
SEES
POPE

I was definitely looking for that one because I'd seen someone laughing at it on Twiterfall, the live feed of tweets from Twitter that I have running in the background on my PC picking up every time somebody says anything about Leicester. The tweeter had a fair point - it's hardly headline news and, worse still, it was difficult to see how it could possibly sell us any papers ... which after all is the purpose of the bills. We're looking to catch the eye of a passer-by, to persuade the casual buyer.

Talking of Twitter, those who use that particular social medium will know just how difficult it can be to get your message across in 140 characters or less - bill writing is a skill that requires you to sell a newspaper in 20 or 30 characters and that's not always easy.

I mentioned that I had been trained in bill writing and in April of this year I did write to the relevant staff at the Mercury with a copy of a training document based on work by Peter Sands, a well-known editorial coach.

That included such tips as:

• Headlines tell it, bills sell it. They are not the same.
• Will it sell? If not, find something else. Poor bills drive sales away.
  

... and my personal favourite:

• Tease the reader. Don't give away the whole story. 'The bill is like the bikini; what it reveals is provocative; what it conceals is vital' - former Sunday Times editor, Harold Evans.

Clearly, bill writing has not been our top priority, but we spent a bit of time talking about it today and, hopefully, while they might not cause as much amusement from tomorrow, our bills might sell a few extra papers.

Should our Leicester City writer be a Leicester City fan?

I had lunch yesterday with an old geek friend, Dan, who's also a massive football fan.

In the spirit of openness and amidst the furore around allowances, I'll declare that I was on a day's holiday and paid for the lunch myself and there won't be an expenses claim to cover it, despite the fact that we sat and talked for more than three hours almost entirely about work-related things. Oddly, he turned up with £18,000 in cash in a laptop bag ... but that's another story!

Inevitably the conversation got round to the fact that the Leicester Mercury is currently looking to replace our long-term football writer Bill Anderson who has retired after covering Leicester City for more than 30 years. I placed an advert on a web site called www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk -it's a site I set up about 10 years ago - asking for applications from experienced football writers. We've been flooded with people wanting the job. Almost 140 have applied.

I don't know why I'm surprised - it's a great job if you're a football writer. You get to cover one of the bigger clubs in the football league on a day-to-day basis for one of the largest regional papers in the country. For a lot of people, it is a dream of a job.

I was commenting on how difficult it is to work down from 138 to a sensible short-list and the criteria we are using, when Dan asked: 'Are you looking for a Leicester City fan?'

I have to admit, that wasn't something that I'd thought about, but Dan was adamant that, as a football fan, he wanted his local newspaper writer to be a fan.

Was he right? Should the Mercury's next football writer be a Leicester City fan?

So, what is this blog?

I've been asked a fair few times about the status of this blog since I first starting putting my thoughts online as editor of the Mercury. Not everybody is entirely happy that I use this medium to talk about what I see going on around me.

I think there is a nervousness in some quarters about the different tone that blogging allows journalists to take compared with the articles they write in our newspapers. As editor of a local paper, the only place I get to express an opinion in print is when writing the leader column, but that is really about giving the newspaper a stance on issues rather than expressing a personal thought and it's not really an appropriate outlet for holding a discussion about what does - or even what should - make a newspaper.

I'm quite clear about one thing - I am blogging as the editor of the paper and see this blog as being as much a part of the company's output as the newspaper itself, our free weekly titles, the monthly magazine or our other websites: thisisleicestershire and thebluearmy. Other people on the paper blog and those who do so in their capacity as employees - education correspondent Ian Wishart and political writer Martin Robinson - hold the same view. I know they do as we sat down and discussed it. We agreed that probably the best analogy was to view the blogs as columns of the newspaper. This means that while they have much more freedom to express themselves and their opinion, it still has to be done within the boundaries of what would be acceptable for the Leicester Mercury. For them, that has an important consequence: they know that I am editor of their blogs and that, if it comes to it, I will get the last say in what they can and cannot blog.

I suspect for a lot of people involved in social media that might seem odd, but I think it is an inevitable consequence of them blogging on the back of their reputation as an employee of the paper. They both seem quite happy with the situation and they blog because they want to, not because I tell them to (which I don't). I don't expect to be involved in what they are saying and I certainly don't read anything before they post ... and so far I haven't intervened in any way on either blog. They are both bright, articulate guys and I'm really pleased that they think blogging is worthwhile.

I see my own blog in a similar way. I see it as a column of the paper.

On the other hand, our news editor, Mark Charlton, blogs in a personal capacity. He doesn't really spend time talking about his role at work - he's much more likely to be found chatting about the twins that he and his wife are expecting ... or some very odd connection that he has with a German football team. Don't ask. Whatever, Mark's blog is not part of the Mercury.

The odd thing for me is this: I hadn't really intended to put my thoughts into the public domain ... yet. Don't get me wrong, I think editors should blog and I think there are massive benefits to be had from holding a public discussion about the paper and how we work. I think the tools of social media give us the opportunity to be far more open and transparent and things like blogging and Twitter allow me to have conversations with far more people than I would be able to without them. I believe that transparency builds trust which itself is the bedrock of the relationship between a newspaper and its readers.

But I wasn't ready yet.

There are two things about blogging that worry me. Firstly, will people find it interesting? And, secondly, will I have time to blog often enough to make it worthwhile? What I had intended to do was to blog 'privately' for a couple of months so that I could judge for myself before putting my thoughts out into the open for feedback. I didn't want to spend too long messing about setting myself up so I picked up an old blog, deleted all the old posts and began writing.

OK, I know I could have gone into my settings and made it a completely private blog, but I - fairly naively as it turned out - thought nobody would notice while I carried out my little trial. Very quickly, I had more than 500 visitors coming to the blog each week - it's not a massive number, but it's enough for me to consider it public rather than private!

To be honest, I enjoy blogging (even if I nearly always end up doing it very late at night - it's now 11.50pm) and I see it as a start. I believe that 'social media' will play a massive part in the success of our newspaper going forward and the key to that success will be conversation ... and conversation is a two-way street which is enabled on a large scale by things such as this blog, Twitter and Facebook.

I'm listening. Talk to me.

Talking to readers

I pulled up at the security cabin in the DMU carpark this afternoon to be greeted by two men. There was the dreaded sound of air being sucked in through gritted teeth as I explained that no, I didn't think I had a space booked, but I did have a meeting to get to. "Don't know about that, Sir, where are you from?" "The Leicester Mercury." "Right, you've got a new Editor haven't you?" "I am the new Editor." "Right, well when are you going to put something interesting in the paper then?"

We were off to a flying start! To be fair, they were helpful, found me a car park space and then explained that they both had the paper delivered every day - had done for years - but they didn't sound convinced about the content. As I got out of the car, one of them wandered over and asked my a question that I'd already been asked today: 'Have you moved the printing of the Mercury away to Derby? Doesn't that mean that the paper's full of old news?'

Yes and no.

Yes, we have moved the printing, but no it doesn't mean our news will be old. In fact, I believe our news will be more up to date - I'll explain below.

But first, why have we moved the printing? It's obviously about saving costs - running a press is an expensive business and for some time regional newspaper companies have been reducing the number of presses so that the those remaining can be used for more of each day, reducing the amount of time that they stand idle. The presses at the Mercury building have for some time printed other newspapers - including, for example, the Hull Daily Mail, the Grimsby Evening Telegraph and the Lincolnshire Echo. The Nottingham Post has not had its own press for at least the last 15 years and has been printed at Derby. All of these newspapers are part of the same group as the Leicester Mercury, Northcliffe Media Group.

Our sister company in Derby has better, faster presses than those at Leicester and, by moving the Nottingham paper to another of the group's presses in Stoke, we were able to save a lot of money by reducing the number of presses from three to two.

It's wasn't a nice decision - more than 60 people lost their jobs - but it was part of cost-cutting programme that the group has gone through to ensure that it has a healthy future and to guarantee that Leicester keeps an independent local newspaper. I mentioned in my earlier post that we have concentrated on making sure that those things that make the Mercury a Leicester newspaper, remain intact and in Leicester. That means that the reporters, the photographers, the feature writers, the sports team, and the editorial management team - including me - all remain in in Leicester. We also design all the main pages and proof read all pages.

Of course, the one thing that closing the Leicester press did affect was our deadlines. The Mercury now starts printing at about 3am - it takes a few hours to complete the run, but it does mean that the paper is on sale much earlier in the day. In some shops, it is available by 7am and you can find it on the counter of all shops by not long after 10am.

So how can I argue that this gives us the opportunity to have fresher rather than older news?

When I arrived at the Mercury in February, the shift patterns in our newsroom went something like this. The pages in the paper were split into two sorts: live pages and what we call overnight pages. As you might expect, live pages were those that were done on the day of publication. The overnight pages were, as the name implies, done the day before and these accounted for the vast majority of pages. In fact, the number of live pages on the first edition of the paper was usually not more than three.

Most of our staff would work a normal 'office hours' day, which meant that pretty much all of the overnight pages had to be complete by about 5 or 6pm. Obviously we could not put all of our pages together at the last minute and the overnight pages were done throughout the day prior to publication - in fact, on the first Monday that I arrived at the Mercury, the first news conference that I attended was at 9.30am and it was to discuss the news for Tuesday's paper. The only stories that the news editor could confidently tell me about must have come from over the weekend - or worse still, Friday - as he had so little time on Monday to prepare them before the 9.30am conference. As the week went by, it was clear that stories would be held out from one day to give the news editor the opportunity to fill early overnight pages the next day.

Even if the newsdesk wanted to get stories into the paper as quickly as possible, there were plenty of things that happened late in the afternoon, and which were not strong enough to go on the three live pages the next morning, which would therefore be held out for another full day..

For example, a reporter in court who filed her story at 5pm on a Monday would not usually expect it to appear in the paper on Tuesday unless it was strong enough to go on pages 1, 2 or 3. It would appear in Wednesday's paper.

In fact, because our deadlines for the first edition live pages were so early the next morning, some of our staff had to come in at 6am to prepare them. Of course, at that time in the morning, most sane people are still fast asleep, or at least only just getting up ... which meant we got very little news as there was nobody to speak to! This meant in reality that even the news for the live pages was usually prepared the night before and very little changed in the morning.

As I have mentioned we worked what were pretty typical hours for an 'evening' paper - starting reasonably early in the morning, but largely leaving by 5 or 6pm.

Now, however, we are moving increasingly to work as a morning paper - that means that we don't start anything like as early, but we work much later in the evening.

So, the court reporter who files her story at 6pm can be far more confident now that it will appear on Tuesday, not Wednesday as happened under the previous system. It has the potential to bring much of our news forwards, often meaning that it will be published a day earlier. This is not an instant change for us - we have not moved immediately to bring our staff in much later (they could file as late as 2am under the new system), but the paper is moving towards later deadlines, giving us the opportunity to get news into the paper more quickly.

Of course, there will always be the exceptions. Big news that breaks in the middle of the night - under the old system it would have got into the paper the next day on the live pages ... now, the paper would be printed and it would be too late. But you'd be surprised how rarely news breaks in the middle of the night, especially between 2am and 7am.

We will see an interesting test of our new systems on Sunday when the count for the Euro elections takes place. We fear that the count for the East Midlands seats - which is taking place in Leicester - may not finish until 2am. If it is that late, we will get it into Monday's paper ... if it's 2.30am we'll probably still just manage it, but if it's any later ...

Update on Patricia Hewitt exclusive

While writing the bit below on Ms Hewitt's decision to stand down at the next general election, I wrote to her asking why she came to the Mercury, rather than go to a wider audience through the national press. Here's her response:

"Happy to help with the blog! It's the people of Leicester West who elect me and pay for me, so I had to make my announcement directly to them, rather than just using the national media. I have always felt lucky to have a strong local newspaper like the Leicester Mercury that really campaigns on local issues - so there really was only one choice about how to make my news public."

Ok, there will be those that say that I was looking for a cheap compliment for the Mercury and that the response is a bit sickly - but that wasn't what I was doing, I was just trying to avoid putting words into Ms Hewitt's mouth even though I was fairly sure I knew what the answer would be. While Ms Hewitt's response may be instinctive, or even political, we have plenty of research to show that what differentiates our newspaper from other media around about us is that we are trustworthy, traditional and, most of all, local.

We may be slow in comparison with much of the digital media that we all consume nowadays, but actually slow is not always bad. Note for example the growing 'slow-food' campaign or 'slowdown' - our newspaper habits give us time to look a little more carefully at the stories in front of us. Our reporter spent the best part of an hour speaking to Ms Hewitt yesterday and then plenty more time putting the articles together - he was then helped by our policital correspondent, Martin Robinson, the newsdesk and variuos production people to finish off his work.

So, while the digital response is rapid, much of what was discussed this morning referenced back to the work that we put in yesterday and it was our work that ensured that the conversation that went on was at least based on fact. Even the online versions of the national papers pointed back to us as the original source.

We seek to combine this with our presence online - our exclusive this morning was available on thisisleicestershire long before it was picked up elsewhere and we have used my blog and twitter to look for reaction to help inform tomorrow's article on reaction to Ms Hewitt's decision. It is a difficult balance, but we are looking to combine the best of the old with the best of the new ...

A good old-fashioned exclusive

The Leicester Mercury has a big political exclusive today - Patricia Hewitt is to stand down at the next general election. It's an exclusive in the old-fashioned sense of the word. That is, it hasn't appeared anywhere else first, although I suspect that within a few minutes of the paper hitting the newsagents and the story appearing on our website, it will be everywhere - all over the Internet, tv, radio and, of course, the national papers (although they will have to wait until tomorrow).

I can't claim that this exclusive is the result of good old-fashioned investigative reporting. Well, not directly anyway. The truth is Ms Hewitt sent me an email over the weekend asking if she could come to see me yesterday as she had an 'announcement' to make which she thought should be done through the Leicester Mercury.

Given the clamour of doomsayers who have been writing the obituary of local newspapers over the past few years, why do people like Ms Hewitt turn to papers like the Leicester Mercury when they have something to say? Clearly the fact that 170,000 people read the Mercury every day plays a big part in that - we are still the best way to talk to the people of Leicester.

And, despite our occasional falling out with those who would rather that we didn't report what we see and hear, most people know that if they come to us we are going to report in a fair and considered manner. Ms Hewitt is not the only person to turn to us recently - it happens every day and it helps make the Mercury what it is. Our aim is to find unique content about Leicester and while much of that content comes from our reporters, much more comes from the people of Leicester themselves.

Our story on Ms Hewitt today reports the fact that she is to quit and gives a brief overview of her political career in the city, but has little in the way of reflection on what will happen next or reaction from anyone on what she has achieved. Why is that? Well, it's the nature of an exclusive. If we had started to ring people yesterday and ask about Ms Hewitt, her decision would have started to appear elsewhere last night and we would have lost the exclusive nature of our story.

Of course, today we will be looking back at her career in more detail and rounding up people's reaction to the news - I think it's fair to say that she hasn't always been the country's favourite politician! If you've got a view, why not add it in the comments to our article online or email it to me for the paper? As I said above, while our reporters will be doing their bit, the people of Leicester will add to the story in their own unique way.

Do we give our MPs fair coverage?

I've blogged previously on the fairly predictable response by our readers to Keith Vaz's open letter in the Leicester Mercury last Saturday, but I've been back to re-read the letter because there was a part of it that was bugging me.

While I don't agree with much of what he threw at the Mercury - he says we have been unfair and claims to have answered our questions. I, along with the majority of our readers, disagree. Although we know what he spent money on, he has not explained why he thought it right to spend it other than to say it was within the rules. For me, one of the most telling lines in the letter was: 'All MPs get the same budget. It is for them to decide how they spend it.' Is it a budget?

Anyway, that's an ongoing debate which I don't want to get bogged down in today. The issue hasn't gone away - readers are still writing to me about it and I expect we'll see it reflected in next week's election results.

The point I want to pick up on in this post is the one that Mr Vaz makes about our lack of coverage of the work he does as an MP. He says this:

"In the last nine days I travelled to Amsterdam to visit Europol, chaired a European conference on human trafficking, published a 400-page report on the subject, chaired a series of meetings with Joanna Lumley and the Gurkha veterans, spent three days lobbying ministers to agree to the Gurkhas being given rights of settlement, interviewed the Metropolitan Police commissioner and spoken eight times in Parliament."

And that, of course, is on top of any work he did as a constituency MP.

He has a point. We didn't cover any of that.

It is easy to dismiss it as 'not local', as Mr Vaz acting in his capacity as a national politician, of more interest to the national press than his local paper. But that's not entirely fair. Mr Vaz is very active compared with most MPs - in the past year he appears to have spoken in 75 debates, asked more than 246 written questions and he sits on two select committees, including the Home Affairs Committee, which he chairs.

I can find Mr Vaz talking about, or asking quesitons about, Leicester in the House of Commons almost 30 times so far in 2009. In May alone, I can find these:

• A quesiton about the number of children suspended in Leicester schools following racist incidents (if I read the answer correctly, far fewer than in the rest of England)
• Urging the Government to pay attention to professor of genetics at the University of Leicester, Alec Jeffreys, when considering changing the rules on the retention of DNA samples by the police
• A question about the number of independent and internal investigations into the NHS in Leicester - no answer was given.
• A question about the number of care homes in Leicester operated by local authorities and private enterprises, and the number of people over 60 years old in them
• A question asking for the number of people in Leicester diagnosed with schizophrenia and being held in secure hospitals
• A question on the number of racist incidents recorded in Leicester schools. The Government replied that the data was not collected, but promised to consult on whether schools should be forced to record the data
• A question on how much public money funds third sector organisations (charities, vluntary sector, not for profit organisations) in Leicester and Leicestershire
• A question on the number of third party organisations in Leicester - the Government doesn't know

I'm not sure that we covered any of those in the Mercury.

As a standalone question, it is difficult to see what Mr Vaz was getting at with many of the above, but you have to assume there was a purpose behind the questions and I think he has a point when he says we haven't given him enough coverage.

Don't get me wrong - I don't think that we have treated Mr Vaz unfairly in our coverage on his allowance claims. Apart from anything else, we have twice handed over pages to him to have his say, unedited by us. On each occasion, our readers have reacted with anger at what he has said - it is easy for him to blame the messenger, but, on this occasion, I am afraid people really didn't like the message.

But, having said all of that, I don't think we are giving over enough space to the work of our MPs - and I suspect Mr Vaz will be amongst the most active. I'm going to talk to our newsdesk and our lobby correspondent to explore the possibility of doing a weekly column which rounds up what the MPs are up to.

What do you think, would it be interesting?

And given our article yesterday about the fact that nobody can even name our Euro MPs, perhaps we should be looking at them too!

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.