Jeff makes this assertion about the role of journalists, and whether or not they deserve to be regarded as expert in a subject (bold emphasis is mine):

“[T]he press came to believe its own PR and it conflated size with authority: We are big, therefore we have authority; our authority comes from our bigness. But the press, of all parties, should have seen that this didn’t give them authority, for the press was supposed to be in the business of going out to find the real authorities and reporting back to what they said. This is why I always cringe when reporters call themselves experts. No, reporters are expert only at finding experts.”

Let me start disagreeing by agreeing. Jeff is right on this, in a historical sense. Many reporters are not experts about what they report on. Indeed, it’s probably accurate to say most stories are written by journalists who have only just come to the matter in question. They enter the scene – a motorway crash, a political dispute, a murder investigation, whatever – find the principle figures, ask questions and write up the answers. That’s their job.

But away from those staples, there’s a strong argument for journalists in the future to be experts in what they write about, especially when they cover complex fields. Experts make fewer mistakes, and say fewer sillier things. Read Ben Goldacre’s summary of The Year In Bad Science to see what a potent mix of innumeracy, scientific ignorance and bad reporting can bring readers over 12 months. Or, another way: anyone who has been the subject of much press coverage, or read much coverage of a subject they really know about, will know that journalists often make mistakes.

Sometimes it’s a simple error of fact, but a common transgression is the error of interpretation; the facts are all there, and correct, but presented in such a way as to introduce an inaccuracy. It’s like reading a Google Translate version of a bit of writing; the words are all there, but the translation doesn’t necessarily make any sense to a native speaker.

This kind of error creeps in because that interpretation only comes with deep knowledge and experience, and a journalists can’t get that deep understanding by writing just a single story.

Sometimes, specialism isn’t possible. And this inefficiency has been the case for as long as journalism has existed – part of the trade-off needed to allow an affordable mass media (you lose economies of scale if you have an expert on staff for every occasion, and a specialist write-up of every niche story. Staff, ink and paper cost money).

But that trade-off is also at the heart of what is changing today in journalism, because in some cases staff, ink and paper costs are falling to zero. True experts – often non-journalists – can find a mass media voice too, without journalism having to be their job. Someone can live the story – but they can also blog, tweet, podcast and vidcast about it. They’ll find an audience if they’re any good, and anyone’s interested.

Having insiders cover a story they are also part of presents an obvious ethical challenge, but a concern has to be readers may not care, valuing insider access over ethics (they may figure they can figure out biases for themselves). And in this world, the old journalism – the old, generalist, non-expert just-ask-the-questions-ma’am journalism – doesn’t work any more. Across specialisms, there will be people who know more, doing a better job of explaining what’s going on than the pros.

How does journalism react? Well, as Jeff says, by doing what we do best and linking to the rest. But it would also be very limiting to reduce journalists to simply making calls to bring the right people together (although that must be part of their role too, of course). Expert knowledge injects passion, lets us ask better, harder, fairer questions, lets us call bullshit where we see it, enables a view of their bit of the world that goes beyond he-said-she-said. Where editors believe particular stories are core to their journalistic mission, we need to employ the experts – or encourage journalists to become expert in their subject.

A rise in specialism in journalism – and more true experts working in journalism – is going to be a central plank in journalism’s recovery from the hole it’s in. It’ll keep it relevant, and make it better.

Maybe many journalists haven’t made great gurus to date. But, in the future, cringe at the thought of journalists as experts? Nah – celebrate them. They’ll be some of our profession’s saviours.

How curious. Yes, it appears I’ve been ranked one of the 20 most visible web people in the country, in a bit of work by NowPublic, the social media website. The BBC’s Rory Clellan-Jones comes top of their list, along with a bunch of BBC folk and Guardian colleagues, plus Tom Coates, Stephen Fry and – infuriatingly – my wee brother, who has entered the list three places above me at number seven, and is now crowing.

The rather odd list appears to be driven by some kind of tallying of digital media output. Quoth the press release:

“The goal of NowPublic’s MostPublic Index is to measure—on a completely transparent, metric-driven basis—who has the greatest digital reach and is most effectively broadcasting their own personal brand online,” said Leonard Brody, CEO of NowPublic.

“Broadcasting” my “own personal brand online”? It all sounds a little vulgar. And there are some names from the UK I’m surprised to see are missing. I mean – surely Paul Carr doesn’t break wind these days without it being catalogued, photographed (drink in hand), measured and fired out across an RSS feed? [Later: Charles Arthur, also on the list, points out it's crazy that colleague Jemima Kiss isn't on there. She really should be.] And are we really saying the BBC’s Robert Peston – Britain’s blog sensation this year, having broken significant stories on his through the financial crisis – should be a place below yours truly?

Ah, feck it. The form would say maybe we are. It does seem I gained this distinction for this semi-opaque goldfish bowl of my own making – blogging, Twittering and Flickring, and doing so in such a way as to be read by you, gentle reader. I’d suggest NowPublic perhaps put too much weight on leftfield metrics and totting up what means of communication we use, rather than the content (and audience) itself, but let’s not look this one too closely in the mouth, eh?

So, rather than say anything more that is, by turn, curmudgeonly or egocentric, let me simply say something insincere and demonstrably untrue. Something like “this is as much an honour for you as it is for me”… and then I’ll leave it there.

“Blogging, above all else, is conversational. It is social. It is networked. There are two key features to the blog: links, and comments. Fail to include either, and you’re talking to yourself.”

I agree with Paul that blogging is social. But, by failing to include links and comments, are we really “talking to yourself”?

Nah. This seems a very technocratic definition. After all, journalist Paul Carr’s blog is undoubtedly a blog, but has no comments (for reasons he explained here). Marketing guru and author Seth Godin only does trackbacks, not comments, on his very popular (and influential) blog for reasons he explained here. One of the fathers of blogging, Dave Winer, hasn’t had didn’t have comments on his main blog for years. Winer, an often hectoring voice online, was left open to accusations of not taking what he dished out. [Update: as pointed out in a comment here, Dave does now have comments. Mea culpa.]

So what’s missing?

I’ve long said, without really explaining myself, that often blogging is, really, the first form of journalism born of the web. Blogging has changed both the way we think about creating a piece of digital journalism, and the way that piece of work is digested after we’ve clicked “publish”.

It’s probably time to explain myself.

You see, when we decide to use facts to describe or discuss an event, issue or idea, it’s reasonable to say we’re producing journalism. And I’d contend that bloggers often do just this. And I’d further contend that the best bloggers are going into this with their eyes open; they have a keen awareness of at least four factors (I’m sure you can think of more) which make their kind of work different from, say, print journalism, or broadcast, or anything else.

Let’s take a quick look at the four factors, and how they change the end product.

• A story will be commented on. Journalism has always been discussed, if it had any importance at all. But the internet brings together people who really know what they’re talking about, wherever they are. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, their thoughts will appear in comments under your article. And, if they do, you may be reminded of what Dan Gillmor said, five years ago, about readers knowing more than you.
If you’ve done well, they’ll only be debating finer points or offering more information or context. Even praise. But if you’ve written rubbish, they’ll be there to put you right.
You can turn the comments off, but you cannot stop that informed discussion taking place. It will simply move elsewhere. I think Paul and Seth, from my examples earlier, realise that.
The impact of this: stories may be more fair and less conversational (to avoid needless confrontation), may be more solidly researched (to avoid embarrassment), may be better sourced (to support an argument). Everything is written with an important truth in mind: the subjects of a story and the expert readers may bite back, and have the best tools in history to do so.

• A story sits within an ecosystem. Stories don’t live by themselves any more. There’s little excuse not to link to online sources, but even if content fails to include links it is not immune from links’ power. The best blogging shows us how links increase transparency and build trust by showing where a fact came from.
Linking confers authority on the linked-to – we all know how Google works, right? – but it’s less often noted that the linker gains authority too, in a less direct way. Example: not all readers will follow the link, but more savvy readers might simply be reassured it is there (and mouseover it, to see where it leads).
Linking out can also win new readers looking for a trusted guide to take them through the welter of information out there. This is as predicted in 1995 in what, as my regular reader knows, is my favourite digital journalism essay.
The impact of this: journalism becomes more accountable, as readers start to expect – and get – more precise attribution of facts and quotes. It’s no longer enough to tell us what you know; ideally, you show us how you know. Meanwhile, a new form of almost entirely link-based digital journalism, as energetically evangelised by Jeff Jarvis, Scott Karp and others, gains currency and audience. Link journalism should also be cheaper than other kinds. This may be a growth area through the credit-crunched journalism world in 2009.

• A good story will be debated elsewhere. Partly related to the ecosystem point above; bloggers know their best work will be the work that gets dissected across the web, point by point. That provides a strong incentive to make sure it’s correct or, at least, well-argued. It’s hard to retract, clarify or say sorry once your work has gone viral.
Blogging brought about the interest in tracking that conversation, and spawned some of the tools to help do so – for instance, Technorati and trackbacks. Two imperfect technologies, I know, but influential I’m sure – we can now see exactly what people are saying about our work, and gauge its reach.
The impact of this: stories have always had a life beyond initial publication, but that life has now become much bigger in scale and over time. It’s also more trackable even if we, in publishing, are still struggling to properly document it. But that’s another blog post, I think. For now, we need to be aware of that afterlife stories now have, intervene in debates hosted in places not our own, and on occasion use it to inform our work next time.

• Debate is imperfect. I’m being polite – rather than saying blogging brings a sudden awareness that some people are halfwits, or bullies who deliberately and dishonestly look to distort what you say. Let’s just say grand, open, public debate is sometimes an inefficient way to get to the truth of a matter.
The people brought together to comment on your work may not, of course, really know what they’re talking about at all. Indeed, they may be the least qualified buffoons ever to have opined on your given subject.
‘Twas ever thus, down the pub at least; it’s just that the web makes it very obvious to see all these imperfections, and that can appall those who have, somehow, managed to live in more civilised worlds until now. But there’s still an impact here; trolls have a chilling effect. Unregulated, this distortion can distract and dissuade people with interesting things to say. It remains a challenge to create troll-proof online spaces. We need to work out better ways to deny the halfwits a platform, while maintaining and enhancing that platform for the best voices.

There; four factors. But the real legacy of blogging is that we now understand that when publishing online – blogging or not – we have no choice as to how social, how “webby” our work becomes. As long as we publish digitally, we will be discussed. Our work will always be social, unless what we produce is so narrow or lacking in interest nobody gives a damn. The platform doesn’t matter. Comments on or off, links out or not, trackbacks enabled or not, Vignette or WordPress or Tumblr or Twitter or handcoded, hardcore HTML… none of that matters.

Soon, we’ll always have the blogging mindset when we’re working online. The market will demand it; readers will be baffled if we don’t link to our sources, and view us as one would a screaming lunatic in the street if, online, we preach or hector without – at least – a very precise understanding of what we’re talking about.

It’s a world that calls into question lots of journalistic givens – not least the value of being a non-specialist journalist. It’s tougher to be a columnist, too, unless you are capable of game-changing arguments supported by your reporting prowess, wide access and deep knowledge. It’s a world which may accord trust more on individual rather than institutional reputation. It’s a world that favours quality – although quality may mean many different things. It will be a world in which, praise be, we can probably drop the word “blog”.

In short, this is the assimilation of blogging into the mainstream, and is what some of us have been expecting, even hoping for, since we first posted.

I’ll be on the panel alongside Justin Williams, Assistant Editor at the Telegraph Media Group, Martin Stabe,  formerly of Press Gazette and now online editor at Retail Week, Tim Gopsill, who edits the NUJ’s The Journalist magazine, and Mike Rowley, who’s director of digital publishing at Northcliffe Media. Chairing the event is writer and consultant Nico Macdonald.

It’s a panel which, in an otherwise empty room, could probably have a heated debate… and these NMK events always bring in a lively and knowledgable audience too. This should be fun.

After nine-and-a-half wonderful years at the Guardian, I’ve decided to move to pastures new, to become editor of the European edition of WSJ.com, the Wall Street Journal’s website.

WSJ.com has been making great strides of late, including an impressive redesign unveiled just as the current crisis took hold last month. The team there is working to create something outstanding around one of the biggest stories of the time, and it’s a huge thrill to be asked to take the helm in Europe.

I’ll be developing European editorial from London, although I’ll also be working on some special projects with the global operation in New York. Things kick off in the New Year.

Before then, lots of farewells. It’s been a privilege to work for the Guardian in print and on the web, working on some big stories and meeting fascinating people along the way. On guardian.co.uk, I’ve had enormous fun doing things like building our blogs, and launching our audio and video services. I’ll miss everyone, although I hope they’ll still let me sneak in to see the plush new Kings Place offices when they’re all settled in.

But, before then, some drinks may be taken around Farringdon…

I can’t get enough of it. The whole grand circus – the big themes and the strategies being played out by both camps – makes this the most interesting campaign I’ve ever seen, and I’m glued to it. I’ll probably stay up tonight for the debate, now we know Sen. McCain is going to turn up.

Aside from Twitter’s effort, which m’colleague Meg Pickard writes about in detail at her place, another wheeze that has caught my eye is the Economist’s Global Electoral College. It’s pretty much as it says on the tin; a worldwide electoral college where countries have their votes allocated based on their population. Like Twitter, it’s a way of reflecting the opinion of lots of people who don’t have a formal say in this hugely significant election.

“The Economist has redrawn the electoral map to give all 195 of the world’s countries (including the United States) a say in the election’s outcome,” explains the magazine, making its allocation of votes to the US sound like an act of largess, and also suggesting the poll will have an impact on the actual outcome, rather than it all being make-believe. I think most US voters would have a problem with a system that handed them only gets 432 college votes out of the total 9,875, while India gets 1,588 and China 1,900.

Globally, It’s safe to say the race is not quite as close as it is in the US; no countries are red so far – not even China – and most of the world is blue. McCain, it appears, has yet to convince the world, or at least the Economist-reading bit of it, and if Rest Of World had a vote this would be a landslide for Obama.

There are a number of countries which are still white, or haven’t passed the threshold of 10 votes. Iran, interestingly, is undeclared – we can only assume this state of affairs reflects a lack of Adam Smith-admiring Economist readers in the country, rather than genuine indecision.

Not that we know, of course, if the country’s endorsment would play well among those who actually do have a vote in 39 days…

Well, the chain has finally responded, and has done so very firmly indeed. Best Western doesn’t admit to any data loss, saying only that the Herald “brought to our attention the possible compromise of a select portion of data at a single hotel”.

Best Western says it has “found no evidence to support the sensational claims ultimately made by the reporter and newspaper.” They also describe the steps they take to keep data secure, and say “we have no evidence to suggest that there is need for widespread concern”.

Given the strength of Best Western’s denials, the ball appears to be back in the Herald’s court. More evidence would be interesting to see now, especially as the chatter continues around the web; Slashdot has a thread while the Information Week blog asks some questions about Best Western’s statement. There’s clearly a million miles between the Herald’s story and the chain’s retort.

A few agreed with my general theme – that it really wasn’t up to snuff – while some thought I was too harsh, and should be giving Number 10 far greater credit for even engaging with new web technologies in this way, because few governments – if any – do.

On Perfect Path, social media guru Lloyd Davis points out that a major part of the work on the new site has been to install “better plumbing” – WordPress. Simon Dickson, who’s behind the site, agrees in comments this was an early milestone.

All of which is fine – WordPress is a very fine CMS, and now much more than just a blogging platform. The geek in me says it’s reasonably cool Number 10 is using it. But platforms are, of course, immaterial to users – they only see the output – and it still leaves the question of the site’s purpose. 

Part of the problem is that those of us working in the digital world view social media as a Very Good Thing. If you were around for web 1.0 you know it has brought the kind of interlinking of people and ideas we were dreaming of back in the day.

We see the values of Web 2.0 – of information sharing, collaboration and creativity – a unambiguously good and important, so it is hard to be critical of any site that claims to support those values, especially when it emerges from the highest echelons of government, even if the only evidence of that support is using the same tools as we do.

The drawback of this approach, though, is that not everything is a social media problem. Not everything needs to be bashed by the bloggy hammer. Being better at blogs than other governments is a doubly pointless measure of success; we can’t, after all, choose to be ruled by, say, Sweden, if it has a more enlightened approach to comment moderation.

So we need to ask if putting photographs on Flickr, videos on YouTube, and adopting a blog format for press releases really achieves anything, whether or not the comments are switched on.

What is this site’s purpose? Lest I be accused of being entirely negative (it’s been said) let’s look a something this site could be doing.

The government is not shy of complaining that its message is distorted by portions of the media. So one thing this site could do is allow access to briefings on what decision has been taken, or which position adopted, and why. That’s beyond a press release, or a press conference transcript, or speech text.

How exactly that explanation is delivered – through text, graphics, data or video – is up for debate, and is also where the space for innovation is (see MySociety). But what you’re trying to do is explain is the PM’s tactics for stopping knife crime, improving public health, reforming the NHS or dealing with Russia. I’d be fascinated to see more of Brown’s briefing material around these things (while accepting some, especially around foreign affairs, might be classified for good reason). After all, I’ve helped pay for it. I suspect many others would be too – not least Britain’s small but (finally) growing band of political bloggers.

This is the obvious social media angle here, also alluded to by Lloyd in his comments. It is not about building a social site at Number10.gov.uk. It’s about something much, much harder – something that runs counter to the DNA (even the interests) of all governments – being more transparent.

Maybe that’s the trouble here. As Ben Hammersley said in comments on the last post, “What bothers me is the mismatch between what they have to play with, viz a distinctly non-interactive, non-webby PM, and the choices they made.” Maybe this site really is just a roughly-executed Web 2.0 veneer for a very 1.0 PM, and without addressing that fundamental problem it can’t do things properly.

But as things stand, it’s neither starting a conversation, nor facilitating one.

Poor old Gordon Brown. Not only is he struggling with the traditional Prime Ministerial work of managing a sticky economy and anticipating major armed conflicts, all while on holiday, but he’s got the new world to deal with – all this web wonkery that’s sprung up since that Spring day in 1997 when he entered government. There was no time in opposition to prepare for Twitter, that’s for sure.

One has to fear his lack of web time is tripping him up. Building a new website for the PM is, undoubtedly, a tricky brief, but a more savvy Downing Street would surely not have allowed the new Number 10 website to go public without a lot more work. Yes, it’s labelled “beta”, but that’s not an excuse. It’s been around for days now, but it’s trying too hard, too obviously attempting to get hip to the social media jive.

Before we even start on the difficult social stuff, there are the basics to consider. For a start someone should, surely, have checked some domains before using the phrase “Number10tv” as the name for the WebCameron-esque video section of the new site. One assumes they didn’t check, because on www.Number10.tv the far-right BNP has its video channel (I’m not providing a link for obvious Googlejuice reasons). Over on www.Number10tv.com another opportunist has stepped in to post a “satirical” version of the official site (“Watch PM Brown as he dithers over the most pressing issues of the day!”).

Oh dear.

On the site Number 10′s consultants did build, things are better, but still not good. For a kick-off, the design’s at sea – the search box is crashing into the navigation on at least one browser, lines roam everywhere, a colour palette is unevenly applied and there’s a bit of a typographical disaster going on all over. 

Trendy features are present and correct, but meaningless. Sure, the press releases are in reverse chronological order, and have a little calendar on them, just like blogs. The headlines are serifed, just like A List Apart. Share buttons – the usual Delicious, Digg, Facebook – hang around hopefully, in the unlikely event anyone’s going to want to breathlessly tell their friends about a press release from Downing Street. But it all means nothing if the content and the intent aren’t there. Dig deeper, and it’s hard not to see all this as slightly cynical use of web 2.0 lipstick to tart up a banal 1.0 reality.

Which brings us to the content. There’s nothing, inherently, wrong with this stuff, but it remains traditional broadcast, one to many. There are the releases, snaps of Gordon meeting Barack, video of Gordon making a speech, lots of anodyne historical stuff that I suspect (I’m no historian) Wikipedia does better, and certainly in more depth. No, there are no links out to that, as far as I could see. But – oh God – there is the Twitter channel. I daresay it was inevitable.

But conversation – real conversation – between users is off-limits. I’m told they’re using WordPress to power the site. WordPress is the blog platform that powers this, and tens of thousands of other, blogs. So they’re actually turning comments off to achieve all this. Meanwhile they rely on YouTube and Flickr to display some still photographs and video (although “Number 10 TV” – the official version – uses the Brightcove platform), but comments are turned off on those third party sites as well.

I know they’ll worry the Daily Mail will do its dinger the moment a user says something nasty or obscene. There’s probably no budget for moderation. So why bother?

The idea, one assumes, is that enthusiastic subjects will find this stuff because it’s in their social media world, not the Number 10 silo, and that they’ll then want to favourite and share it all, motivated by the sheer delight of finding footage of Gordon Brown addressing the Knesset. I’ll let you decide if that’s likely, although I note the video of that speech has done just under 600 views on YouTube since it was posted a week ago. I’m not sure if that’s bad or, actually, remarkable. Maybe there’s a lot of clicking around Downing Street itself.

Either way, the whole is just a bit off. It’s like hearing a script from Yes, Prime Minister recited by someone who doesn’t speak English. The words, the gags, are there, but there’s no understanding of what this really means, and what it should change. They’ve turned a trick, yes, but one that’s not nearly good enough. Having read the story of Hillary Clinton’s campaign disaster on TheAtlantic.com today, and the extraordinary strategising that went on there (and she still lost) I wonder: would any credible political campaign in the US accept this site?

Authenticity is the key here. Blogs, when they first appeared a decade ago, brought with them an expectation of a conversational tone, of genuine interactivity, of someone being at the other end of the line. It’s clear that Gordon’s not – of course he’s not – he’s running the country. That reality makes it hard to achieve what this site pretends it does. Using these tactics, of pretending this has been touched by the Web 2.0 magic, reduces this site to tokenism, another wobbly piece of scenery on the stage Gordon Brown is trying to claim control of. It really doesn’t help.

The Football League kicked off on Saturday – as you can see, I attempted a panoramic pic with the iPhone as the teams lined up at the County Ground, Swindon. We got things rolling nicely with a 3-1 victory, including a lovely first goal netted by Billy Paynter after a the kind of intricate passing move we don’t get to enjoy too often down those parts. Hurrahs all round, as you can imagine.

The other big kick off is this Saturday, of course, when the Premiership gets going. I’m delighted that the League of Scoundrels, the official Completetosh Fantasy Football league, already sports a mighty 15 teams after my earlier plug here. Welcome, one and all.

If you haven’t already, I hope you’ll join in the fun – it’s free, and you’ll get to watch me embarrass myself by being almost unfeasibly rubbish. Once you’ve signed up here, click on the Friends Leagues link and search for the League of Scoundrels. The password is Completetosh. Go on – sign up. It’s so much more fun than work. And, you know… it’s August, after all.

And if you’ve signed up but haven’t picked a team yet, don’t forget to log in before the end of the week to pick your squad – you really don’t want to end up with the team the auto pick feature gives you.