Let’s be honest, the lion’s share of working as a web editor for the EP website means working independently: staring at the computer screen in your office, typing maniacally. Hours might pass without seeing anybody. Sometimes we are lucky and get to taste the glitz and glamour of the House, but meeting a high political figure is still almost easier than meeting the reader who we are writing for.
Touching the reader.
I am talking about the mysterious “citizen” to whom we explain in as light as possible a manner what the EP is dealing with. We want to do it in such a way that a person with little background knowledge would get it, but it is still more often easier to write for somebody who takes an active interest, who knows a bit about legislative procedures, what a plenary sitting is, a hemicycle, co-decision and an MEP.
Apart from family at home who are forced to follow the EP website in order see if I am still alive, have I ever met a reader? Yes and no. It always makes my day when I hear a lobbyist in Place du Luxembourg commenting one of our articles. It made me fly when a EU friend of mine was linking one of our articles in Facebook. And I love to see a blog or even an online newspaper stealing a piece of our work (it happens quite often!).
Still, months pass and I cannot get rid of the feeling that I want to meet one of the tens of thousands of people visiting our website daily. Want to meet the real reader, to hear what they have to say, what they like, what they hate, what more they want to know, how we can do things better.
Perhaps it might be an idea to come out into the field and spend some time with political activists who are engaging directly with citizens about European political issues.
We have one such group here in Dublin, “PES activists Dublin”. It’s the local city group of the Party of European Socialists. If you ever want to come and chat with us about how we engage people on Europeam matters just get in touch. Desmond.
Ralf, Have you checked the EP website today? You asked – we delivered!
Kristina,
Far from the joys of a personal meeting, but I have been working through parts of the web pages of the European Parliament from the viewpoint of an EU citizen.
The blog posts contain observations on accessible and less accessible information, beginning with the lack of updated information about the common EU rules for the upcoming European elections.
If feed-back is what you and your colleagues want, there is a place to start.
You could try woopra.com, an interesting real-time statistics tool that let’s you get in touch with readers on the site.
Like Google Analytics though, I suspect it does send data to US data centres. So maybe only add it for a few hours so that nobody in the hierarchy notices :)