Editor's blog Friday 17 June 2011 'Pausing' the Guardian LiveBlog
After today, The Guardian's NHS reform LiveBlog is to take a well-earned 'pause' in its near-minute-by-minute coverage of the NHS reforms.
It will be continuing, and may burst back into full 'live' at future moments of policy drama. of which we can be confident there will be not a few.
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Click here for details of 'Strongman Cameron's J-turn on NHS reform: neo-classical clinical senates (or what did the Romans ever do for us?)', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.
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(Conflict of interest declaration: the LiveBlog has been kind enough to link to various bits and pieces here, and also asked me to do one of their Q&A sessions, so of course I'm very biased in its favour.)
If anyone doubts the broader truth of the multiplier effect, I would point them to the NHS Reform LiveBlog. It built on The Guardian's existing strengths in new media (such as its essential politics LiveBlog); it took on health policy, which is a challenging area of public policy; and it added value through its own work and its ecumenical linking to other sources, with explanation of the context. Its immediacy gave it great vibrancy.
There are challenges to repeatedly blogging about a specific policy area: jargonism; going native; over-fondness of one's own voice; loss of sense of proportion and context.
Randeep Ramesh and Rowenna Davis (supported by their journalistic and technical colleagues) avoided these challenges. They bought health policy discussion to a wider audience, and vice versa.
It was quite a task, and they succeeded.
Journalism can sometimes seem like an ignoble thing, both to do and to read. For all that, it remains how we find out more things about the world: it can be a place to debate ideas. These are the good bits of journalism. These make it feel like something worthwhile to do, which adds value.
Well done to the Guardian LiveBlog team. Enjoy the 'pause'; we look forward to seeing you again.