The Liverpool Daily Post, Echo and sister Merseyside based launched its real time newsroom today.

A behind the scenes look crossed with news hot off the keyboard.  It is billed as a live blog, one that allows comment as stories to flow – I think it has a Twitter feel to it as well.

It looks like it will be a valuable tool for PRs to interact and engage and follow the journalists.

Thanks to Craig McGinty for another nice spot.

Post Script

North West online business title Business Desk announced its arrival on Twitter on Monday as did the Liverpool Daily Post, last week.

I signed up to Twitter a while ago.  The time I did it escapes me and I have no recollection of it.

The concept when first explained did not grab me.  Why would I be interested in Stephen Fry being stuck in a lift for instance?  That was one of his latest escapades, good luck to him.

Actually my first experience was concerning the Big Chip Awards for the NW digital media sector.  I had worked on a couple of award entries for SEO experts PushOn.  I was at home on the night of the awards and was following Simon Wharton – the PushON chief – to see if we had won on Twitter.  Well, as the night wore on the Twitters become less frequent as the merriment increased.  At the point of victory it had all gone quiet.

Simon was right though it has a number of real ways that PRs and indeed any enterprise can use to communicate with its audience as listed by Drew B’S blog.  Among those listed are its use in crisis management and networking.

Indeed on the last point of signing up to follow a number of Twitters I had four reciprocate or message me.

The thing about social networking besides giving you a voice it can also give you an audience.  And sometimes a warm feeling that you can become part of a community.

When I was asked by a client if the publication, we had just been interviewed by, would link back I sheepishly said, “no.”

How many online versions of popular business and trade press and lifestyle publications allow you to link back?  How many offer that small incentive?  Surprisingly few is the answer or so it seems.

And that is a shame because it is an opportunity to encourage more loyalty and increase levels of conversation.  And it all accrues brownie points with the search engines.  The best thing it does not bring major costs but only a change of tactics.

You could also point that many online outlets do not link to the subject of their stories, another missed opportunity.

You only have to look at How-Do to know that it is a vital communications source for North West communications professionals.  And why?  Well because it encourages that conversation and loyalty.

There are so many online outlets that are missing out, that are not interacting with their clients and that is disappointing.  In this current climate it is also criminal.  After all if a site has lots of comment and encourages more traffic by engaging with readers, it surely will have more chance attracting advertising.

I am not having a go at publications that are not taking advantage of their potential, I just want the media and the journalists to become more vital and even more valued sources of information.

A caught 10 minutes of quite a preposterous episode today: The Treasury Select Committee grilling five well-known journalists about their coverage of the credit crunch and especially Northern Rock.

The caption underneath kept coming up with “should coverage of the credit crunch be restricted?”  Ridiculous!

The five business journalists included Robert Peston, Jeff Randall and Alex Brummer.  As you might guess Robert Peston was the centre of attention.

The MPs questioning centred on responsibility.  Shouldn’t Peston and his colleagues hold off with stories to give Northern Rock a chance?  Hadn’t they created the run on the building society?  Did they have inside information and mysterious sources?

The rebuttal was that Northern Rock was a badly run business.  It had failed because its wholesale division had stalled and big investors saw the writing on the wall and took their money out.  Holding off on a story for 48 hours would not have saved it.

The run was in many ways Northern Rock’s fault.  Their website had gone down because the bandwidth capacity could not cope with visitors and this created panic.

The queues had built up because they have too few branches for their client base and too few staff were put on duty.

And if a financial institution is badly run, whose fault is it when savers want to take their money elsewhere?  And more so when it is on the brink of collapse?

As for the insinuation that the journalists had shady sources, well that proved to show the MPs as lacking an understanding of their subject.

Peston maintained he had many sources and had used many different sources over the years, including some of the MPs questioning him.  He cross checked everything and did not have narrow weak biased source to base his stories on – unlike Bush’s evidence of going to war with Iraq.

If this was a trial then the case would have been thrown out on the first day.  It was embarrassing for the MPs and they did not know hope ridiculous they sounded.

This view that the media somehow created a recession is seeking a convenient scape goat.

And as for recklessly putting economic institutions in danger by their reporting, it came out that there is a suspicion the the Government used the media to suppress share prices before buying them by leaking the appropriate stories.  I wonder if that will go before a select committee.

It is like looking at an avalanche hurtling towards you and you cannot out run it.  In fact you have short legs and you have sprained your ankle.

I got back from holiday with a bug and no appetite, either food wise or media wise, considering the deluge of bad news.

Now, the media cannot be blamed for poor lending practices, over borrowing, naivety that a boom is never going to end, greed or any of the other causes that can be attributed to the recession.  But even the most optimistic might begin to feel they are mired at the edge of civilisation.  Should we all go round the world for a year or live it up on the dole and see whether our new band will make it?

I wonder how long it will take before good news stories start to dig us out of this hole when the storm has passed.

In terms of PR downturns aren’t bad news (sorry about the pun) in terms of potential stories, it remains to be seen how it affects agencies.

Then again booms are good as well.  Some media outlets get pushed along in the flow, whichever way it is going and enjoy the ride.  Indeed a good news story seems unwelcome, it destroys the concensus that we are in real trouble.  When times are good who wants to hear the opposite view?

That is a little unfair.  The Salford Advertiser recently had a story for example from Begbies the insolvency business that told of the woe of local enterprises.  To their credit they ran a piece on three companies I work for in the areas that are doing really well when I said that the piece gave just one side of the story.

Anyway I found a really interesting piece from Jean-Paul Rodrigue on the workings of an economic cycle.

In it the media is noted as a part of the mania stage.  But it has a part to play all along.  I believe it is not an instigator for the most part – you cannot blame our economic problems on the media – but it is a driver at which ever stage i the cycle we are.

People ask if there are stories out there, some from businesses that do well in tough market conditions and I reply, “I am glad you asked, recession related news, views and advice are in boom time.”

Is that a surprise?

That it is news or that people cannot cook?

We tend to think at times that the media is looking for that knock out story or that we have to wait for something to happen before contacting them.

The media is competitive.  It has pages, airwaves and web pages to fill every day.  Where a good PR comes in is to supply the staple diet of stories, but also look for new angles: reveal something we did not know or had taken note of.

Two stories come to mind are the potato one today, which we probably knew many people can rustle up a mean Pot Noodle but not much else.

The other from a little way back is one about the deadly keyboard: the bubonic germ investedWMD Saddam loving environment.  We could have guessed that keyboards are dirty places, but the delivery from the University of Arizona was done so well in made headlines worldwide.

It is creativity and presentation that count.

The last thing I want is to see magazines going bust.

Over the last couple of years a number of NW business publications have fallen away.  They have been replaced by Crain’s and Good Company and How-Do, which have been life savers PR wise.

The lifestyle press is the North West has been doing well if the number of publications are something to base this statement on.  Buoyed by city centre living, a favourable economy and a property boom the numbers of magazines that I could pick up in Manchester about a year ago I estimated at 14.  There was one named after me I think called “Bob.”

In the last month The Magazine has been the centre of speculation as to its future and now YQ magazine has had to defend its position after cuts fueled speculation.

The lifestyle press has enjoyed the boom.  Any fall off in the property sector and its advertising and worsening of the credit crunch and you have to winder if more stories will unfortunately be appearing in How-Do with increasing frequency.

I am starting to hear this criticism being levelled at the media, as though any financial difficulties can be attributed solely to some irresponsible journalists.

If that is true, surely any upturn can be attributed to those same guys. So if your house has trebled in value you should be thanking your friendly local business journalist. Go on treat them to an expensive meal out at the very least.

It is true that confidence is everything. And of course the media has a strong influence here. But the fickle ebbing and flow of that precious feel good factor has more to it than the media wallowing in doom ridden scenarios, if we take away some ridiculous articles: one such piece in a national today claimed that the property market will not recover for 20 years. Who are you Mystic Meg or whatever she was called before the lottery. About as reliable.

The fact is the banks over lent, credit card companies over lent, mortgage companies over lent. We want our money back: Credit Crunch. I don’t have an economics degree I know but it didn’t help the lenders, so.

The media has power, it can influence, but somewhere, at least here, it is for the most part reporting the mistakes of others.

If you want to blame someone there are much more credible targets and some of them unfortunately include ourselves.

Shocking isn’t it?  The picture above shows some of the damage from the epicentre of last week’s quake.  Some people were woken up no doubt, others lost crockery.

Apart from a serious injury was there any need to dominate the pages and airwaves with this?

And then there was Prince Harry.

Brave lad.  He has done the right thing and you have to admire him for that.  But surely the disproportionate coverage the media has devoted to the story works against their original aim.

When a personality or a story have too much media coverage it undoubtedly starts to grate: people push back against it as though they were being forced into believing something.  It is a natural reaction.

Half the coverage of the Prince Harry story would have got the message across just fine and with more impact.

What else happened in the news last week?  I really don’t know.