Thanet District Council and the late news.

Why would the council not want people to read their press releases? This is an update to yesterday’s post, which I concede was a bit confusing.

As some of you will remember back in June the council decided to stop sending press releases out to media sources that they considered unaccredited.

I have been making a fuss about this on and off since they did so and the main responses I have got about this issue from the council are at http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/07/thanet-district-councils-response-to.html

The council’s take on this one is that they have replaced sending out press release emails with a news feed, the problem here though is that the council news feed doesn’t work properly.

The idea of this news feed is that every time the council put a press release on their website it sends out a signal, so that all of the people who would have received the press release before now get the notification.

If this worked properly the press release would appear with the other local news on the sidebar of this and other blogs.

So yesterday at about 11 am the press release about their being more boats in Ramsgate harbour would have popped to the top of my sidebar. Then at lunchtime the one about the new enterprise zone would have appeared. Later at about tea time the one about refusing the new development at Ramsgate’s Granville marina should have appeared.

What actually happened was nothing until the middle of last night when the council’s website suddenly started churning out signals saying that there were new press releases, this is some of it:

2:28 AM (7 hours ago)

Marina berth numbers

2:28 AM (7 hours ago)

Enterprise zone announcement

1:29 AM (8 hours ago)

Arches plans refused

12:33 AM (9 hours ago)

Marina berth numbers

12:33 AM (9 hours ago)

Arches plans refused

12:33 AM (9 hours ago)

Enterprise zone announcement

For me the really irritating thing is that we are all paying for this and yes I accept that the council are doing what they said they would do in feeding their press releases, the problem is feeding them all in the middle of the night when hardly anyone is likely to read them.

Certainly this repeated sending of the same press release feeds at different time confuses feed reading programs that are inclined to treat them as spam. The latest posts thing on my sidebar seems to have taken the first time the last thing fed first appeared as the time stamp so the councils last press release is time stamped as yesterday i.e. well down the sidebar out of site and below all today’s other news.

What is questionable is whether this has happened by accident or design, by this I mean is the intention to conceal news about the council, obviously this is what they have achieved.