Are you ready to change the future of journalism?

A good crowd turned out for the second Brighton Future of News meetup despite the grotty weather last Monday.

We heard from Richard Pope, a freelance designer and developer who works with MySociety and ScraperWiki and is currently developing the Straight Choice election leaflet project, before breaking out into groups to discuss what we would do if we were the local candidates trying to win election votes. Thankfully we had a Labour party activist in our midst to tell us when our ideas were clearly in breach of election rules – giving out cake is a no-no, for example…

(Since we met, ScraperWiki was announced the winner of the technology category at the MediaGuardian Innovation awards – so well done to Richard and all the team!)

Freelance journalist John Keenan was quick off the blogging mark with his thoughts from the evening, some of which I’ve pasted here:

As the general election lumbers ineluctably into view, householders across the United Kingdom must brace themselves for an avalanche of political leaflets. But hold on a minute before you bin the bumf.

According Richard Pope, web designer and political provocateur, there is a mine of unintended information in the annoying pamphlets littering your doormat. Pope told the meeting of the Brighton Future of News Group (BFONG) at the Skiff last night that careful monitoring of such material can prevent politicians getting away with murder.

Pope’s election leaflet project, The Straight Choice, is an attempt to turn the propaganda back on the spin doctors. He outlined a number of ways that journalists (and by implication any engaged citizen) can use leaflets to dig out inconvenient truths. Among these were:

• Track down ‘fake supporters’. Pope highlighted how a supposed group of British National Party members featured in one leaflet were, in fact, a group of Italian models whose photo the BNP had lifted from another source.
• Follow the money. A close reading of the small print detailing where the leaflet was printed can lead you to often surprising information about political donors.
• Spot the spoof: in a desperate attempt to snare your attention, the parties will dress up their dreary slogans as gossip magazine fodder. And you thought photos of celebs in front of their mantelpieces were dodgy – you ain’t seen nothing yet.
• Capture the contradictions. We all know that politicians of every stripe will promise the moon in order to get elected. But they trust us to forget about their lunar pledges as soon as we have tossed aside the handbill. Pope’s website aims to keep them on message and under the microscope.
• Splat the stats. It is amusing and instructive to compare the surreal use of statistics as politicians play the numbers game to support any policy they choose.

Update: Dan Wilson, a freelance consultant and writer and also Labour party activist, has blogged a response to the evening as well. The full version of John Keenan’s post reported Dan’s remark that he’s “not convinced that the Argus wields political influence”. In his own post, Dan gives a bit more context to that: while he would like the Argus to be a “highly regarded and passionate political influence” in the city, he argues that it’s not doing the “dogged scrutiny” that it could. Anyway, read it for yourselves!