We are 1,000 today!

Yes, this is the 1,000th post on this humble PRESS RELEASE ME, LET ME GO blog.

That’s around four years’ worth of blogging, Monday-Friday, on human rights issues in the news (and sometimes things that are not in the news but arguably ought to be).

We’re improving the Blogs platform this autumn (yes, it’s been a bit ropey at times), so now’s a good time to take stock.

In what they tend to call an “Open Thread”, I’d be delighted if you could feed back on anything you‘d like to see from this daily output of stories about human rights misery/hope/suffering/resistance…

What do you think?

Boring format?  Are the pages dull? Want to see video and other “jazzier” content? More photos?

What about the content? Are the posts too long? Too short? (doubtful …).

Is it too “heavy” – too serious and depressing? Or is it even too flippant? (Surely not…).

Are there stories out there we’re not covering that we would should be? Are we too predictable? Too obscure?

Do you want to see more analysis of media coverage in terms of how a story is being represented? A bit of a dissection of media techniques? Or, is the subject matter the key thing? 

What about comments? (which we’d like more of by the way). Are the responses useful? Are the – occasional debates – engaging? If you read the blog and never comment, why not?

Also, how do you find the posts? Are they in your feeds or saved in something like iGoogle? Do you just check it every now and again, fairly randomly? Do you get them from Twitter or Facebook?

Final question – do you even care whether we write these posts? Do you want more, less, or none at all? Do you want more tweets and other stuff instead? (Be gentle here …).

Finally, in time-honoured fashion, let me just plug the fact that we’ll soon be launching a campaign at the Edinburgh Festival for five online activists from the United Arab Emirates (the “UAE 5”) who’ve been charged with “insulting officials” after calling for democracy and criticising the government. Stay tuned for more on this soon.

What better way to remind ourselves that we do at least have the luxury of being able to freely post our thoughts to the world online without – generally speaking – the fear of being arrested by our local police force or by Special Branch?

Cheers, and here’s to the next 1,000 ….