I posted this on my Twitter feed at 1624 today:

'Saw a 'Jesus Army' van earlier. It was parked badly and on double yellows. It seems God's teachings don't extend to driving skills.'

By 1829, I'd received a reply: (from http://twitter.com/jesus_army)

'Sadly Jesus Army driving skills are less than divine. We'll try to improve but perfection is a long way off.'

Is that a case of God moving in mysterious ways or perhaps someone doing a quick Twitter search to see what was being said about them?

It's quite scary to think that someone's actually paying attention to what I'm saying.  It's cool though; I feel I've made a new friend.

The saying goes that ‘every cloud has a silver lining’.  Unfortunately, I’m not too sure it does I’m afraid.  Here’s why.

As the council’s chief press officer it’s my job to effectively find a positive from every negative – you know, look for the silver lining of the otherwise grey cloud.

But today, there’s a pretty dark cloud hanging over the council and I’m buggered if I can see even a fleck of silver.

So, does that mean I’m not doing my duty?  Should I always be on the defensive?  Am I letting the council down?

This has nothing to do with ‘spin’.  I don’t do spin, despite what any journalist might tell you.  I prefer to be a press chief who challenges inaccuracies and mis-reporting and seeks to make sure our position is clear and understood.

I’m not the PR person who – as Leeds is engulfed with flood water – stands by and says ‘well, at least the flowers are getting a good watering’.

I’ll tell you this though.  It feels really uncomfortable when you’re facing a reporter and you think ‘actually, there isn’t any defence available here’.

That’s why today, we’ve knocked down the sandbags and held our hands up.

Our strategy has been this: respond in a timely fashion, be open and honest, acknowledge that things haven’t been right, admit that work still needs to be done and reassure the people of Leeds that we’re on the case and we’re already doing something about the issues we face.

You can’t say fairer than that can you?

A colleague posed an interesting question yesterday and it got me thinking.

He wanted to know ‘who is the specific audience you’re speaking to on Twitter?’

Being a communications man and a former broadcaster you’d expect me to have a defined answer, but I didn’t have.

In the past, when you plan a campaign or you have a message you want to get across, you have a very good idea about your audience – who they are, the best way of getting to them etc so you can tailor the message appropriately.

For instance, when you work for a commercial radio station you know exactly who you’re talking to.  The ‘typical listener’ is called Jane, she’s married with two children, she’s in her mid-thirties, she reads the Daily Mail or Daily Express, her husband works for BT, they go on holiday once a year without fail and the family probably shops in Tesco or Asda.  I could go on.

So, as a journalist at this radio station you get a pretty good idea about what kind of news stories Jane is going to be interested in hearing.  Loosely, it’s family, health and wealth.  So, a story about a new breakthrough in breast cancer treatment should come higher in the bulletin than today’s apparent lead story (across all media) of the elections in Afghanistan.

You get the gist.

But here’s the problem with Twitter – exactly who is the audience?

The Twitter website suggests it’s ‘anyone who’s interested in something you’ve got to say’ but when I look at who’s following me, I get confused.

Among others, I’ve got former and existing colleagues, an ex newspaper editor turned media legal-eagle, two would-be Conservative MPs, Radio 4, Number 10 Downing Street (OK, I don’t think for a minute that Radio 4 or 10 Downing Street pay any attention to what I post) and my God son.

That’s one hell of a diverse audience and most of them I’ve never met before.

Some are using Twitter as a way of keeping in touch with me, I’m sure others have a profile because Twitter is the in thing and others are signed up because they are ‘testing’ this new form of social media.  However, of my followers who’ve I’ve never met before (several are abroad) they’ve cleared opted to follow me because they are genuinely interested in what I’ve got to say.

My posts are just ramblings and others are links to things like my blog but clearly my band of faithful followers seem to like what I Tweet about.  Some even forward messages on and I get quite a lot of feedback too.  There’s even a robot (I think that’s what you call it) which re-tweets anything I say with the word 'tea' in it.  I mention having cups of tea quite often, so that’s boosting my global audience too.

So, back to my colleague’s question - ‘who is the specific audience you’re speaking to on Twitter?’  The answer is: ‘I don’t know, but I don’t really care either’.  My audience is much more diverse then all those ‘Janes’ I’d be talking to in radio land.  I’ll keep posting my random ramblings until I notice that the only person I’m speaking to is myself.

Join in the 'fun' if you wish: http://twitter.com/andy_carter

This is a copy of my weekly blog which I write for work and is published on the council's intranet.  The views I express in this log are my own, professional, views as the Head of Communications for Leeds City Council but do not necessarily reflect those of the authority itself.

Ding ding! Round Two.

No, not a boxing match with some of my least-loved journalists, but a case of getting ready for another possible bout with the media over yet another serious reputation matter.

You’ll remember that a few weeks ago, I talked about how the communications team sometime spend many hours doing work which never ever sees the light of day.  This is because part of our job is to prepare for times when we might have to react to an issue, but all the time hoping our preparation goes to waste.  Anyway, we’re having to do it again and this afternoon (Tuesday) I’m going to be briefing senior managers and elected members about what we’ve been doing to ready ourselves for some potentially bad news.

Just a month ago we were doing exactly the same thing – so it’s quite a surprise to me that we’ve had to crank ourselves up to DEFCON 1 again in such a short space of time. It seems it never rains, it just pours sometimes.

You’ll excuse me for not going into further detail about the issue in question. It would be most inappropriate for me to discuss it in my Log.  No, it’s not about me keeping secrets, it’s about me having to do my best to protect the reputation of this great organisation we work for.

Right – BREAKING NEWS – we’ve had an apology. Are you sitting down? Good.  This may come as a shock.  The apology is from .... a journalist!  I know. Incredible.  Are you off the floor yet?

This journalist has said sorry after they turned a jokey comment from a press officer (said during an off-the-record chat) into a formal quote, which they attributed to a council spokesman. This is a serious no-no in news terms.  We rely on the relationship we have with reporters and ‘off-the-record’ chats and background briefings are common way of explaining complicated issues. However, to quote something said in one of those briefings just isn’t the done thing.

You won’t be surprised that we challenged this and were pleased to get an acknowledgement of the fact the line had been crossed and an apology from the journalist concerned and their news editor.

Next – your help please.

I was asked last week to respond to a suggestion from one of our colleagues.  She had put forward the idea that we put some kind of date reference on all of our publications.  This so that someone reading, say for instance a leaflet, would know whether it is ‘in date’ or not. I think there are two issues.  Including a ‘printed on’ date is fine, but how would the reader know if a new version had been printed in the meantime?  Then there’s the ‘valid until’ date idea.  For example our 2009 A to Z guide to services isn’t likely to suddenly become out of date on the 31st December but someone picking it up in January 2010 may assume it is.  So, do we do another print run and just change the date?  I honestly don’t know what the best solution is.  That’s where you come in.

I promised our colleague I’d raise this issue – and this is me raising it.  Your feedback or alternative ideas would be welcome please.  Ta.

Finally, I noticed an interesting report the other day which caught my eye.  A study by the Standards Board for England found that local councillors are more likely to be truthful than MPs.  The poll found less than one per cent of people felt local MPs ‘always’ tell the truth, and 29 per cent thought they ‘never or rarely’ tell the truth.  Two years ago when the poll was last carried out, just 20 per cent of people questioned ticked the ‘never or rarely’ box.

However the study found that faith in local councillors was slightly higher than MPs, with more people feeling they ‘always’ tell the truth, with fewer thinking they ‘never or rarely’ did.

This is most encouraging, but I’m not convinced that journalists would agree.  If they did, I suspect the number of calls we’d get in the press office would drop by half overnight!

There’s no extended communications podcast this week – it should be back next Tuesday along with this Log.  Until then, have a good week.

This is a copy of my weekly blog which I write for work and is published on the council's intranet.  The views I express in this log are my own, professional, views as the Head of Communications for Leeds City Council but do not necessarily reflect those of the authority itself.

It’s amazing how early in the week my blood starts to boil.

Yesterday morning it was about 0605 when BBC Breakfast News reported that ‘local councils and the authorities requested permission to spy on people more than half a million times last year’.

This – as I’m sure you’ve seen – was the story about the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and stems from a Freedom of Information request by the Liberal Democrat Party.  (There’s got to be some irony in that …)

Anyway, the reporter was going on about how (again) local authorities had used these powers ‘to snoop on phone conversations and read people’s emails’.  She then mentioned the fact that on most occasions this was to ‘investigate things like dog fouling’.

Now come on … that’s completely misleading.

To suggest that local councils have a team of officers listening to, for example, Miranda Miggins in Meanwood chatting to her great aunt Ethel in Australia just because Miranda’s pooch did a poo in Park Square once … is frankly ridiculous.

Now then, I am sure that – across the country – there are some authorities who have used the RIPA powers for dubious means.  But, having seen the response to the FOI request which was sent to the Lib Dems I don’t see any case where there wasn’t justification to use the Act to our advantage; especially where some kind of criminal activity was involved.  By that I mean benefit fraud or fly tipping.

But, because BBC Breakfast lumped us all into to the same boat then people like Miranda Miggins will assume that we are routinely ‘spying’ on the great people of Leeds.

The full response to the Liberal Democrats is attached to this edition of In Brief so you can see for yourself.  Please send any comments by return.

Next, a topic I’m dealing with in some depth in the extended podcast this week.

It was reported last week that Doncaster Council had scrapped its civic newspaper/letter ‘saving the tax payer £67,000’ and on last week’s Media Show on BBC Radio Four the question was asked ‘are council newspapers (like our About Leeds) killing off the independent local media?’

The presenter, Steve Hewlett spoke to former BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan and Joshua Peck the deputy leader of Tower Hamlets, which publishes something on a weekly basis.  You can imagine the differing points of view the two guests had (and you can hear it in the extended podcast).

The local newspaper in Tower Hamlets isn’t happy about what the council is doing and has suggested that his paper will go out of business as a result, because ad revenue is going to the council’s publication.

Meanwhile, in Donny, the new mayor has decided to scrap his council’s paper because he thinks it’s ‘nothing more than propaganda’.  But, if the article about it in the Doncaster Free Press is accurate, he seems more concerned about cost.

OK, so here’s what I think.

I don’t agree that Tower Hamlets approach is the right one.  I don’t believe that council publications should be chasing the same revenue as the local ‘independent’ media.  I think council’s should be supporting the local media and not taking them on at their own game.  Yes, despite all my previous Logs in which I express great concern about the standard of modern journalism, I do believe that the independent local media has a vital role to play in democracy and I respect their right to ask searching questions, even if I don’t like them.

As for Doncaster I think the mayor is making a mistake.

He says that he will use the Doncaster Free Press to ‘get out the news about his council’ in future.  Good luck Mr Mayor!  The DFP I’m sure will report on lots of the goings on in civic hall there, but he’s kidding himself if he thinks the paper is going to be full of positive stories.

Yes, a council publication is always going to border on propaganda.  No-one could expect us to run a front page story which slags us off.  It’s our job to talk up all the good things that are going on in our great city.

I’m happy with where I stand on this issue and I have the evidence to back me up.  As I mentioned in last week’s Log; the first results from the About Leeds survey show the vast majority of its readers say they prefer to get their council news via our civic newspaper.

The debate continues in my podcast, which you can access here: http://podcasts.andycarter.eu.

Until next week, take care.

I went to my favourite pub last night for dinner as I thought I deserved a treat.

Well, I say I went ... when I got there it was closed.  Closed for good.  A victim of the recession it seems.

A note pinned to the door from the landlady explained the situation to customers and given her apparent passion for Abba, it was themed around the song 'Thank you for the music'.

Up to now I've not given much thought to the economic downturn.  I've not been spending cash willy-nilly and in fact have been trying to tighten my belt a little.  I also know someone who has been made redundant from his job with one of the banks - but he's pleased to be leaving.

Northallerton is chaos on a Saturday morning when the market is in town and Leeds is busy most evenings when I walk back to the train station; with people spilling out of the bars and pubs along Park Row.

Given that, you could be excused for thinking there isn't a recession.

But when I discovered my favourite pub had gone out of business I was suddenly depressed.

OK, the music in there was always a bit bizarre, but the beer was cold, the food was good and the welcome you got was fantastic.  This pub was clearly a family effort and I feel really sorry for everyone involved.

I know from media reports that several pubs are closing every day - but in a busy town like Northallerton I'm really surprised.  Clearly things are pretty grim ... even up north.