How nice it must be as a blogger to have an editor to protect you from your solecisms. That would be a real luxury. A Washington Post memo on blogging includes a checklist for new blogs which says: “Blog items need to be edited. Your proposal needs to say who will edit blog copy.”

The bit about the value of promotion in print and at the main online site also sounds like a dream for independent bloggers.

The memo, available at the Washington City Paper, talks a lot of sense about blogging. It includes the need for regular updating (at least once a day) which I have not been doing recently.

With my infrequent posts I was surprised to find myself in Adrian Monck’s table of ten British journo-bloggers. It must be the long tail that has kept me there but thanks Adrian.

Yes, I could do with an editor to nag me for the copy.

Yet, there is something special about the immediacy of an unedited blog. Discuss.

How the use of a fold up keyboard and a mobile phone to file copy from a courtroom — because the judge might consider a laptop too obtrusive — would go down in England I don’t know. But Ron Sylvester’s account of using technology to cover a murder case in Kansas is fascinating.

Pity then, that following a link to an example in his blog post there is a message saying the Wichita Eagle is unable to locate the page. In some ways the account is high tech and in others it is making the best of limited resources. For example, he uses a memory stick to get pictures from photographers and file them, which suggests they cannot use their own laptops to send.

What I like, is the sense of a reporter working out the best available way of getting his copy in as fast as possible. That I can really understand. And it will be a bit faster than the copy boys who used to pick up hand-written copy from Bristol magistrates’ court.

When I learned reporting the square bracket was virtually unknown in journalism: it was something found in academic writing. Now it is everywhere. It is useful sometimes and probably the result of most journalists having university degrees.

So why is it being so frequently misused? Instead of being used as a means of interpolation in direct quotations it is being used for substitution. The clue to this is what happens to the quoted sentence if the words in the square brackets are removed — it should still make sense. Take this example from today’s Observer:

‘The efficiency challenge for [the Ministry of Justice] is substantial,’ the document says.

It looks very much as if the quote has been doctored by removing a pronoun. That is not how they should be used, as the Guardian style book makes clear:

“Square brackets,” the grammarian said, “are used in direct quotes when an interpolation [a note from the writer, not uttered by the speaker] is added to provide essential information.”

The Economist style book uses this example: “Let them [the poor] eat cake.” Better would have to give us the pure quote and write:

Marie-Antionette said of the poor: “Let them eat cake.”

Mostly the need for square brackets can be avoided by careful writing. If writers do not understand their use what hope has the reader.

A shot which probably lasted no more than a second in the film Lions for Lambs has been troubling me. It has nothing to do with the theme of the picture but the reporter, Janine Roth (Meryl Streep), looks at a page of her notebook in a taxi — it is written in shorthand. But American reporters don’t do shorthand.

What, I have been puzzling, is the significance of that shot in a film made in American for an American audience. It can’t be to suggest a slipping in standards of US journalism, because the skill of writing shorthand has never been popular there.

An article in the New York Times of 1898 about the problems of working as a reporter in London, says: “In England nearly all reporters are first-class shorthand man (sic); in American shorthand writing among newspaper men is almost unknown.”

So far as I know, things have not changed much and in 1998 Rex Rhodes examined the differences in England and the US in an article for the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

As one of those who struggled to master (partially) Pitman’s I think it was worthwhile and tell students who complain, that they will not regret the tedium of learning. When I later tried using a tape recorder I found it was too slow for daily use, although valuable as a record of some interviews. As a productivity tool shorthand is essential.

But why did Robert Redford include the shot of a page in shorthand? I can’t believe that it was done without thought, but the meaning escapes me.

I have long avoided making predictions about the future because the one thing I have learned is that they ae invariably wrong.

Reading David Leigh, an assistant editor of th Guardian, yesterday on the question of whether reporters are doomed, I hoped my theory stands up this time.

The media and journalism is certainly changing and a commercial model that will work online is elusive. As a result, say the doomsters, reporting as we know it is dead, because the people who do the job will not be able to afford a crust for their babies.

All I can really say in response is that something will turn up, things happen. We will find a new business model.

The future for reporting, according to some, is in networks of amateur citizen journalists working with paid journalists. Actually, I see that as a development of what has happened for a long time. Yes, it may be important but unlikely to be more than a part of the answer.

Leigh writes about the impact of stories coming from the influence of the places they are published. He continues:

That is perhaps one of the biggest dangers of the media revolution. When th media fragment — as they will — and splinter into a thousand websites, a thousand digital channels, all weak financially, then we will see a severe reduction in the power of each individual media outlet. The reporter will struggle to be heards over the cacophony of a thousand other voices.

Is that really what is going to happen? More likely there will be consolidation resulting in a smaller number of media organisations. That is a concern, but a different one.

The web is already bringing us global news brands. The BBC’s website has been called Brtain’s biggest newspaper, and it is being increasing read around the world. The Guardian of which David Leigh is an assistant editor, is also read around the world and draws advertising revenue from these distant places.

Rupert Murdoch having recognised the reality of the internet is embarking on the development of the Wall Street Journal global brand.

The trade press, some of whose titles have a fine record in investigative reporting, remains strong as it adapts to the web which is enabling publications to overcome some of the restraints of weekly, or less frequent, publication.

Overall, my belief is that good reporting will survive. Whether it will of not is a very different question to one of whether newspapers will survive which Leigh’s colleague Roy Greenslade has also discussed recently.

Surveys always provide a good and easy headline, so I just made up the one above. It has no basis in research but the same seems to go for too many press releases which seem to blind journalists to the need for further research, checking and explanation.

I was planning to work with journalism students this afternoon on polls and statistics when I read Peter Wilby’s thoughts in the On the Press column in Media Guardian.

He mentions a series of recent stories and writes:

I have no reason to believe these “findings” were inaccurately reported. But when I read these stories I want to ask questions. What does “double” mean? From what to what? From one to two? What dies “increased risk” mean? How big a risk? How does it compare with other risks? What does “up to” mean?

Journalists, he writes, are not very good with figures. He admits to failing A-level maths. I did not even get that far but maths was my best O-level pass. Yet the real problem among journalists is not an inibility to cope with calculus but a lack of basic arithmetic.

Wilby’s column is a must-read for journalism students. What set me off thinking about numbers and journalism was the Observer Travel Awards, published yesterday (there is only a sort summary on the web).

They are based on questionnaires completed by Observer, Guardian and Guardian Unlimited readers. The data was recorded by an independent company.

As a result the travel publicists of Switzerland will be able to advertise that they have been voted the favourite European country of Guardian and Observer readers.

Norway and Sweden are in second and third places. Between them they gathered 400 responses. There is a scoring system which converts these into a percentage score to allow small companies (and countries) to be compared with larger ones.

Switzerland is a very nice country but I doubt very much if it is really the “favourite” country of the readers.

Swan Hellenic becomes the winner of the Observer Travel Award for the Best Cruise Line on the basis of 13 completed questionnaires.

Before taking these awards seriously we need to know the methodology. And with these very small numbers, I would like to know how they ensure that votes are not inspired by companies.

As the headline on Wilby’s piece puts it: Damn journalists and statistics.

Last week a district judge in Norwich barred the press from printing the addresses of two police sergeants accused of failing to take proper care of a man who was rushed to hospital after a spell in the cells.

The Eastern Daily Press argued in the magistrates court that the order was contrary to legislation and case law and should not be used to protect the “comfort or feelings” of defendants. The judge disagreed, saying there was a serious risk that members of the criminal community would target the officers and their families.

The accepted use of the Contempt of Court Act to protect the victims of blackmail was mentioned in the EDP report. A few days later the Sunday Times reported that two men had been charged with blackmail and the target was a member of the royal family.

I wondered whether giving that fact would lead to a jigsaw identification. Very quickly another piece was put into puzzle with reports, sourced to Buckingham Palace, that the target was a junior member of the family who did not undertake official royal duties.

Inevitably the name of the member of the royal family was quickly on blogs and then in newspapers outside the UK. And, being just a Google search away, effectively published in this country.

Even if the royal connection was kept secret when the case came to trial it is difficult to imagine that it and the name of the victim would not have eventually come to light.

While I feel the increasing use of the Contempt of Court Act, as in Norwich, to restrict publication of court details is undermining the principle of open justice, I have always believed it is wrong to publish the names of blackmail victims.

The Crown Prosecution Service puts the case for secrecy in blackmail cases clearly:

Although rare, blackmail is one of the ugliest and most vicious of offences. Its victims are vulnerable because in order to bring the blackmailer to justice they must themselves make public the secrets the blackmailer is threatening to expose.

The Crown Prosecution Service will not hesitate to prosecute blackmail cases and we will always seek to protect the anonymity of blackmail victims. We recognise that victims may be reluctant to come forward and give evidence against a blackmailer unless such protection is granted.

As in rape cases the protection of the identity of the victim makes it more likely that criminals will be brought before the courts.