Why is there no online section within Media UK?

Hi, Cynthia,

This hasn’t been discussed here before, and I welcome a debate on this, because… I’m not sure what to do.

Our guidelines for how to get listed say, for example, that to be listed in radio or television you need to have a licence. For print media, we normally ask for an ISSN number or equivalent.

For online media, it’s much harder. I’d like to list Londonist and London SE1 for example; but for each one of those high quality publications there also exists a large amount of poor-quality websites. The definition of “quality” isn’t one that really helps here, since I have a concept of quality that may differ from yours; and the benefit of having clear rules is that people are left in no doubt whether their media title can be listed or not.

I don’t know what the step forward is here. How can we list Londonist but not little Johnny’s bedroom-produced website?

Perhaps the step forward is to begin accepting paid-for entries, with some ‘editorial picks’?

How can we list Londonist but not little Johnny’s bedroom-produced website?

Perhaps you could consider a Wikipedia style ‘notability guideline’ designed to include all of the relevant titles. This criteria could include demonstrable coverage by other media outlets, a significant number of Google web search results, a large amount of web traffic, and being based in and having a clear focus on the United Kingdom.

Dave has a good suggestion.. or maybe websites that have some form of body corporate (CIC, Ltd, Charity) or something behind it. or membership with some sort of trade group (eg CMA, PCC?)

Some interesting responses :-)

I agree with Dave in terms of the notability guildine, I also quite like the idea of ‘editorial picks’, how would that be done!