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 but do not necessarily reflect those of the authority itself.

I’ve been playing with my widget this week.

No – that’s not meant to be rude, so there’s no need for any schoolboy-esque sniggers of laughter from the back row thanks.

My widget gives me a snapshot of what’s being said about us (us being the council) at any given time.

I’ve designed it so that it pulls together what’s being talked about in blogs, on Twitter, Google News and the feed from the company which monitors all national and regional media outlets on our behalf.

The widget is a bit of Java script which can be embedded in a web page and it updates in real time, so you get a constant stream of the ‘conversations’ in which the council’s name is being taken in vain (or otherwise).

I want to display this web page on a large computer screen in the office, so we can see what’s being said about us and react to it.  OK, if a negative comment pops up on Twitter for instance, I’m not proposing we immediately get on to the person concerned, but having a tool that tells us what’s being talked about there and then can only be a good thing.

Thanks also to the fantastic research skills of Fiona in the council’s business transformation team who has dug up some other really interesting online tools which will help us keep track of what’s being said about us in the social media tinterweb world.

I think that there’s some further tweaking of my widget required and it needs to be played with a bit more before being used in ‘anger’.  Once it’s up and running, I’ll share the web address with you, so you can try it for yourself.

I’m planning to design another widget which will automate the daily ‘News Review’ produced by your communications team.  Rather than News Review being a list of the stories that we thought were relevant when we pressed the ‘send’ button on Outlook, I want a future News Review to be a bit more ‘dynamic’ so it’s a constant feed of information and stories which is updated continuously.

Hopefully, you’ll be able to pick and choose the stories which are most appropriate to your line of work.  It also means you won’t have to wait until the time it arrives in your inbox.  You’ll be able to check the feed at 0630 while you’re travelling in on the number 13 bus, over lunch, or even at two o’clock in the morning if you can’t sleep.

My anticipated launch date is early next year.

My other issue this week is about facts.  There was a really interesting article in the Media Guardian about research conducted by a former journalist suggesting that (at least) one police force isn’t perhaps as honest as it used to be.

You can read the full story online, but I’ll summarise it for you here.

Nigel Green used to be the crime reporter for the Sunderland Echo, but most recently has been pulling together material for his MA dissertation.

He’s been studying the ‘output’ of Northumbria Police and as a result has concluded the force has been holding back details of crimes.  He put in a Freedom of Information request to try and gather some evidence.  He found, for example, that in June this year there were 7,951 crimes dealt with by Northumbria Police, but information about only 76 of them was released.

‘Meanwhile’, he says, ‘the force’s £1.5 million-a-year communications department pumps out more press releases on falling crime rates, clampdowns, raids, initiatives and other stories designed to produce positive PR.’

The article includes comments from a number of newspaper editors who aren’t happy with the quality of information they get from their local police force.

I’m not going to judge Northumbria Police.  I’m sure it has drawn up a communications strategy that it is most likely to be very happy with, even if the local media aren’t.

But, frankly, I’m a bit surprised that has taken a former reporter doing research for his MA for it to be realised that one particular organisation’s communications seems to always be positive.

I suspect our colleagues at the Johnston Press and in radio and TV here in Leeds wouldn’t take very long to spot if we only ever talked about the good stuff.