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Lessons from our open news trial

This article is more than 12 years old
Dan Roberts
The first week of the Guardian's experiment in publishing its news lists has reaped advantages, but more is needed

Well, the sky didn't fall in. One week in, and the remarkable thing about our experiment publishing The Guardian's list of upcoming stories is why newspapers have been so secretive about such information for so long. Whatever competitive advantage may have been lost by giving rivals a clue what we were up to was more than made up for by a growing range of ideas and tips from readers.

Admittedly, to begin with, most of the interest was in the concept of open news rather than the content of our list. Several blogs latched onto the idea with enthusiasm:

Using readers as a resource is one thing, but revealing what stories are planned and offering to let readers affect that process is another. In the not-too-distant past, most newspapers were almost as secretive as government agencies; the processes involved in producing journalism day-to-day were only revealed to members of the priesthood, and things like story lists were kept under virtual lock and key.

We had a surprising amount of interest from around the world, including this in Le Monde, and I gave interviews to a Canadian radio station and US technology website Mashable

But gradually, the interest from readers began to eclipse the interest from other journalists and a subtle shift began to take place in our newsroom priorities. A good example was our coverage of the UK government's health reforms, which many readers felt didn't do justice to the worrying revolution facing one of Britain's national treasures. We initially responded by ramping up our live coverage of the two-day NHS debate in the House of Lords - attracting over 1,000 comments. But we also asked our health reporter to do a bit of digging and list today an upcoming story on how cuts have already begun to hit services.

Complex issues like this require more than a few hours notice to generate usable tips however, so we are also updating the newslist experiment to include a calendar of upcoming events to give readers a chance to take part in longer-range reporting projects. We have also responded to some requests to add other sections such as sport. I suspect more tweaking is needed to improve communication but am hopeful that this clever work to translate the list into a format that developers can use will help produce a cleaner user experience.

Of course, Fleet Street wouldn't be the same without a bit of gentle teasing, and we could always revert to this style if all else fails. We'd love to know what you think would work best.

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