If Thinkaboutit.eu has had all the EU bloggers getting excited, then Rebekah Wade’s appearance giving the Hugh Cudlipp lecture seems to have done the same thing for media blogs: Roy Greenslade and Charlie Beckett to name but two. As this is a media blog as well as an EU one, I shall Wade in (hoho). I’d suggest that those of us involved in EU communication think about some of the points she raises.
1) She talks about campaigning journalism and listening to readers. We need to do the same thing: think about what matters to the people who we ultimately touch with what we do.
2) She talks about the need to be lighthearted sometimes. I don’t think I’m spilling any state secrets when I say that the EU does tend to take itself too seriously sometimes (and I include myself in that. Sometimes you can’t blame us but it’s still true).
3) She talks about living for the scoop. I don’t think the Commission is as bad as some public organisations about trying to manage the news agenda, sometimes it’s as leaky as Henry’s bucket. But we shouldn’t always see that as a bad thing. Just like having internal disagreements made public is not necessarily a bad thing – sometimes it can actively help get interest in a story.
4) She reveals that the Sun editorial team go on the promotional holidays. Get down there among people. In any job, but especially one like ours, getting out, talking to people, seeing what their issues are: that’s incredibly important. The best thing about this job in London has been the public events, like the Thames Festival or the Languages Show, where people are on the whole so constructive and genuinely interested.
The whole thing is here. Read it, let me know what you think.