This is a copy of my weekly blog which I write for work and is published on the council's intranet.
 
It's worrying that so many people get their news about the council from the Yorkshire Evening Post - especially considering it is so selective about what it prints. Right, before I go any further, let me: 1. Reassure those readers who may be nervous about me making such a claim that I have shared this view quite widely and with my journalist contacts and 2. That I am not at all surprised that the YEP is selective. That's hardly new.
 
Here's why I'm banging on about it this week. Two reasons.
 
One is the fact that I'm annoyed that the paper chose to leave out the most relevant bit of a reply we wrote to a letter from Malcolm Naylor of Otley in which he (once again) criticises About Leeds. In his letter he called for About Leeds to be published as a supplement within the YEP. Clearly it was our public duty to investigate whether this idea would hold water and be cost effective. That's why we asked the YEP to quote us for a 16-page supplement. We received an email by return stating that the full rate card cost for four editions would be £553,000. This information was duly used in our reply to Mr Naylor's correspondence in which we were robustly defensive of our paper. You won't be surprised that the YEP cut the bit about the £553,000 even though Mr Naylor's 'supplement suggestion' would have cost £400,000 more than the current bill for producing, printing and distributing About Leeds.
 
Frankly, that's a ruddy cheek. The paper asks us to respond and then doesn't bother to print the reply in full. How jolly convenient. However, we have sent a copy of the full letter to Mr Naylor so it can see it for himself.
 
And here's reason two. One of our elected members was getting rather hot under the collar at the end of last week over an issue regarding a failed court case which hindered our ability to deal with a specific problem. This councillor was very keen to express quite a robust view about the court's decision and to make it clear that they were less than happy about the outcome. After a few phone calls, we agreed a line to take and issued a statement which made the councillor's displeasure obvious, but without it being too blunt. Some would say it's not the kind of tone we should take - but I actually think that sometimes we should be a bit more 'bolshie' in our responses to the media. The rest of the statement was rather dull and concerned what legal options were open to us now.
 
Considering the councillor was very keen to make their point (hence the reason we put it first in the statement) there was a certain amount of irony in the fact the reporter chose to use everything in the statement ... apart from the first sentence and the robust reply! In the past I've been told that people think my press office team and I 'just get in the way' and try to 'obstruct', but clearly that's not the case. Actually, we work hard to make sure that we get a right to reply, but there's not much we can do when a journalist decides to be deliberately selective.
 
On a more happy note, I was really pleased with the coverage - especially with the broadcast media - that the launch of the Leeds bid to be a host city for the World Cup in 2018 achieved. It was featured on both Look North and ITV Calendar which reach a combined audience of well over 1 million people. Even Sky Sports News turned out.
 
You can lend your support please, by visiting www.backthebidleeds.com and then clicking through to the main FA website where you can cast your vote for Leeds.
 
A delegation from the FA will be in the city on Thursday for an inspection visit when they'll be checking out what Leeds has to offer. If you are based in Civic Hall and see lots of big-wigs hanging around outside the new Rose Bowl building at about 1700 then that is why they are there. I've had to write a speech for Councillor Andrew Carter. I've managed to keep it to two sides of A4 and it's suitably gushing about our great city and county.
 
Finally this week, I received this email from colleagues Jim and Victoria:
 
I like the tone of the Captain's Log and agreed with what I saw as the thrust that some FOI press queries are about costly fishing trips/lazy journalism rather than the outing of questionable conduct. My plea to whoever is looking at communication is help save us from drowning in a sea of emails. They have become the lazy way to tick the box of having passed on information. I know all about the management of time strategies but am dispirited by the sheer number and often irrelevance of many emails.
 
Sending or forwarding masses of information is not communication. However, my brain is giving up on being able to handle this challenge, even with help from dedicated business support. Am I the only one? It's not always helped by the numerous exhortations to get staff to fill in the latest survey on xxx... and then the daily reminders on why it's important. Not to mention; In Brief and other worthy newsletters; Questioning the values of these is viewed as heresy.
 
They used to burn heretics so keep me away from bundles of kindling.
 
I think this is a very interesting observation and I can't disagree with it.
 
Let's be honest, the best communication is face-to-face where a manager delivers a message in person to one of his or her team. Unfortunately, there are too many members of staff within Leeds City Council who don't get briefed in person or through a team meeting. That's why there's now an over reliance on emails/written messages. In fact there's an over reliance on email full stop! It annoys and frustrates me that colleagues who sit within feet of me send me an email instead of getting off their backsides and coming over to talk to me. I no longer 'do emails' on a Friday and at last people are noticing. My inbox is a trickle on a Friday compared to a flood the rest of the week.
 
As a way of trying to move away from loads of written internal communications, my team and I are working on a much more modern way of getting the message across. I'll hopefully have more to share with you on that soon.
 
Until next week, take care.