Over a decade after devolution, the Scottish parliament has gone from strength to strength. In contrast to the Welsh Assembly, Scotland was granted tax-raising powers and has gone on to make wide-ranging changes. On St. Andrews Day, Alex Salmond, the First Minister for Scotland, raised a white paper for a referendum on the complete independence. So could this be the end of our glorious union?

It seems unlikely. In Wales, the idea of devolution has always been met with mild indifference. From an outright no in the original 1979 referendum – 86.9 percent of Cardiff residents voted for no devolution – to an only-just yes in 1997, it seems as if Wales is in no hurry to separate itself from Britain. Welsh patriotism is everywhere, demonstrated by the recent resurgence of the language. So why do the Welsh not seem keen on ruling themselves?

Signs of Welsh patriotism can be found all over Cardiff

The All Wales Convention claims to have the answer. After a year of consulting with the Welsh people through public meetings, opinion polls, and its website (and £1.3 million later) the convention believes that the Welsh people are for stronger devolution after all. The move towards devolution has been slow and the process complex, leading to a ‘great fog’ of confusion. People cannot understand it, so don’t feel engaged with the Assembly.

The devolutionary process has not been consistent or transparent; the transfer of power “opportunistic, rather than strategic,” says the convention. Since 2007, powers have been granted through a series of Framework Bills, relying on parliament to approve each transfer individually. The whole process is therefore in the hands of Westminster’s whims. This complicated system has led to a lack of understanding and support.

The convention was put in place as part of Labour and Plaid Cymru’s coalition agreement in 2007. Their programme of government, One Wales, committed to the convention and, depending on the results, a further referendum on more powers for the Assembly. This is enshrined in Part Four of the Government of Wales Act 2006. Sir Emyr Jones-Parry, who headed the convention, made far-reaching claims for their findings, arguing that the solution would be to hand over all devolutionary powers at once, rather than stumbling through case-by-case.

The All Wales Convention claims there is a 'great fog' of confusion over devolution

The convention directly consulted with several organizations, including the Wales Council for Voluntary Action, representing the third sector. “I would agree with Sir Emyr’s conclusion that there is a ‘fog’ surrounding the settlement and the process,” says Michelle Matheron, a senior policy officer for the WCVA. “We very much support the convention’s recommendation to move to Part Four, as we feel that this would enable the third sector to better understand what is devolved and what isn’t, and would enable organisations in Wales to campaign effectively for legislative changes.”

This sense of a ‘fog’ over current devolutionary process was one of the convention’s key findings, but it would be hard to say that they found overwhelming support for further devolution. Only 47 percent of those polled said that they would vote ‘yes’ in a referendum, compared to 37 percent against, and 16 percent undecided. Hardly enough to prove that the tide has turned in favour of devolution.

Plaid Cymru, albeit rather predictably, argue that: “Our communities are tired of the broken politics of Westminster but trust the Welsh Assembly government to get on and get the job done,” says Deputy Leader Helen Mary Jones AM. “This cumbersome system is failing all of the communities of Wales.” Jones may here have inadvertently stumbled onto the reason some people do not support devolution – they don’t agree with the party-politics of the current government.

The Welsh Assembly Government has made itself known with popular policies like free prescriptions

But for many the WAG has proved itself through a succession of popular policies. “We found that if people had come into contact with some of the policies, such as free prescriptions, or getting rid of SATs in primary schools,” says a spokesperson for the convention, “then they were more supportive. They knew what WAG had been doing. It’s things that affect them in everyday life, really.”

It is true that support for the Assembly has consistently increased since its inception. The convention found that 71 percent of people were now in favour of the Assembly, compared to the lukewarm 50.3 percent who originally voted in support of it. As the ‘great fog’ clears, support grows, and the convention believe further devolution will do this for good. So maybe the Welsh are coming round to the idea of self-rule. They just need a little getting used to it, that’s all.

Our lecturer, Glyn Mottershead, talked about using Excel to get the answers you wanted from data sets, provided by the government or elsewhere – what he referred to as ‘interviewing data’. This may have sounded dull to others but the familiarity of it got me excited. It may sound evil, but while working in telecoms I came up with all sorts of ways of measuring just how much work everyone was doing – or how little. I could easily find out who was at fault for delays or just not doing their job properly. Imagine using this to hold public services to account, rather than just my under-achieving colleagues.

Glyn talked about how Computer Assisted Reporting, or CAR, like this may seem far from glamorous, but actually harks a return to the ‘caped crusader’ ideal of a journalist. Modern governments are well versed in the art of burying the information we want under an overwhelming amount of data. The passing of the Freedom of Information Act was supposed to usher in a new era of transparent government. At times, of course, the desire of government to keep this information secret can make this rather redundant. More often, however, they simply try and mislead by spinning statistics to their own advantage.

One of the many advantages of the digital age is that we no longer have to accept the spin. Instead, we can pick over the statistics ourselves, and use the data to source high-quality journalism. This form of investigative journalism may seem dreary, but the information it produces holds to account everyone meant to be working in our service. By doing so, we can stave off corruption – a far cry from lazy, agency-produced journalism. The use of APIs on news sites as large as the BBC, or the Guardian, opens up a great deal of information to the general public, and, inevitably, the blogosphere. This could lead to a great opening-up, the much talked about democratisation of journalism. If you can bear to sift through the spreadsheets.

A blog, however, is not inherently good. It gains value only by the hard work of the contributor and an interesting choice of topic. Joanna’s stood out for its contributions to the online debate over the role of technology in the future of journalism. This is a subject that cannot be far from the minds of anyone involved in journalism, 0r wanting to be involved in journalism, at the moment. There are already many great thinkers involved in the debate online, from NYU professor Jeff Jarvis, to ex-WIRED editor Kevin Kelly and the ever-present Clay Shirky.

The idea of becoming part of a debate of such high calibre is intimidating, but this is exactly what Joanna did. Before I became involved in journalism, there always seemed to be an invisible barrier between myself and the people I read and read about. Realising that I could actually find and speak to these people has probably been my most fascinating discovery so far. I think it could be this division which is preventing people from feeling truly engaged with news and the societies they are a part of. As blogging works towards removing these barriers for everyone, I think it could be an incredibly powerful tool.

In this case, Joanna Geary was a journalist very much aware of the potential pitfalls facing the industry, while herself experiencing the redundancy process at a local newspaper. By writing a blog, she was able to engage in the public conversation around the topics that were directly effecting her. Putting to one side the fact that, as a professional journalist, raising her public profile proved highly beneficial to her career, the idea of enabling those actually effected by a story to become a part of the process of reporting on that story sounds to me like a highly enriched journalism. In terms of quality of the news that is produced, I don’t think anyone has anything to worry about.

The image of boozy, trilby-wearing journalists staggering around Fleet Street is clearly a difficult thing to let go of. Even for my generation of aspiring journalists, eager to embrace technological change, the romance of journalism still must have had a little bit to do with our career choice. But, as a previous guest speaker, Adam Tinworth, wrote on his blog recently, that job just doesn’t exist any more. The parameters are changing.

This doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Of course there’s a panic about how to finance journalism in an age where people are increasingly expecting to get things for free. This panic seems to be perfectly justified – it seems doubtful that even Murdoch has the answer on this one.

In such uncertainty, however, it is important that we don’t lose sight of the realities of the changes in journalism. As Rory pointed out in his lecture, the news has actually got BETTER (although I’m with Charlie Brooker on how news graphics has at times verged towards distracting, rather than illustrative). It would be foolish to cower away from the ‘challenge’ of citizen journalism, rather than embrace these changes. The democratising of information can only be a good thing. And there’s nothing we can do about it anyway.

Rory seemed to be in the camp of those bemused by Google Wave and it’s potential to transform the way we communicate with each other, and, as a result, our journalism. What came to my mind was Clay Shirky’s assertion that technology can only effect the way we behave when it becomes boring, like the use of email to collobrate larger groups of people, quickly, than ever before. Surely it will be the same with Google Wave, perhaps why the rush to experiment with it seems to be leading largely to confusion.

Considering that he was so financially-minded, it was surprising that Adam was so supportive of blogging. Blogs, after all, are a supposed to be a great equaller, taking the power of information away from the hands of the privileged few with the use of a printing press and good distrubtor, and putting it in the hands of anyone with some knowledge and an internet account.

But to scurry behind a paywall at the thought of all this would be to completely misunderstand the nature of the threat, Adam argued. It would be to think of competition in a traditional sense, another print edition next to yours in a shop, providing fairly similar content for a fairly similar price. Instead, what the traditional media is facing is an unmeasurably vast ‘conversation’, contributed to by anyone discussing the same subject, be that behind another paywall, in a blog, on a forum, on Twitter…wherever.

The democracy offered with this, and the chance for people to become truly involved and engaged with a subject, is not something that traditional media can compete with. Instead, we should aim to become part of the conversation by offering up free online content and connecting with others who are discussing the same thing. It is no longer a one-way street.

The RBI business model, however, still relies on content safeguarded behind a paywall. The strategic aim of the blogs was to direct traffic towards this content. For RBI, who provide detailed specialist information, this may be appropriate, but it didn’t really seem to be a solution. After all the inspiring talk about the ‘digital revolution’, it seemed somehow perverse to be talking about bl0gs in such a cynical way.

The question seemed to remain unanswered: outside of the highly specialised trader markets that RBI deal with, how can journalists expect to get paid for researching and producing high-quality material while being a part of the digital age?

Am I being naive to want to believe John Bernstein’s argument – maybe the ad-funded, free-to-the-consumer model may still work? It might just be that we have looked upon advertising in the wrong way. Citing Chris Anderson, the ex-Wired editor, from his book ‘Free: The Future of a Radical Price’, Bernstein argues that traditional advertising has had value due to a scarce resource – space.

The argument against online advertising has been that, as the internet is boundless, space is no longer a scarce resource and therefore loses value. However, there is something that the internet has over print. The extent of engagement and interactivity of the average internet-user wields a lot of information; this can be used to target ads.

It’s a scary thought, and I doubt anyone enjoys Facebook ads asking them if they’re feeling lonely straight after a break-up. But as Kevin Kelly, another ex-Wired editor, argued on TED, perhaps embracing this new lack of privacy is the price we pay for a new level of co-operation on the internet, and, as long as we live in a capitalist society, someone somewhere will always want to sell us something.

The event itself has been reported all over the media, particularly The Guardian, of course providing thorough coverage on a media event caused by the tweeting of its own editor, and in Private Eye, which has long been complaining about the power that law firms, and therefore the rich who can afford to hire them, over our press freedom.

For once this is a news story providing many reasons to be optimistic. Firstly, the influence that people can have when they have the ability to co-operate in a new, fast and effective way – using Twitter. As Clay Shirky would probably say, the power isn’t in the tool itself, but in people’s ability to use a tool to communicate with each other in ways which would previously have been impossible. It’s doubtful that the creators of Twitter had Trafigura or Carter-Ruck in mind; that’s the power we, as users, have made of it.

The second is that this does not appear to have been a moment-in-passing; it seems to be having some real impact in both the media and parliament. Now that the general public, and members of the houses of parliament are all clear what super-injunctions are (and The Guardian have provided a step-by-step guide just in case) it’s easier to start making some noise about it. The debate in parliament may lead to a total rethink in the way our libel laws – long perceived as archaic and unfair by our American counterparts – control our press freedoms. And anything leading to a debate about increasing our freedom of speech can only be a good thing.

If this makes you feel all warm and fuzzy about the possibility of the web, and you haven’t seen it already, definitely check out this speech by Kevin Kelly on TED. Last time I watched it I got really excited and ended up wearing my Google t-shirt round the house for a little while.

For me, that seems she is underestimating the importance of the text – and, for me, an ardent consumer of news my whole life – the text is key.  I might spend a little while flicking through some pretty pictures on a blog, but what really draws me back to a blog again and again – as with a newspaper, or a magazine – is the quality of the writing. I would never say that journalists shouldn’t look for ways to improve their storytelling, in fact, I think the opposite. But we shouldn’t get so het up with trying to embrace the future that we for one second forget what has made journalism great in the past, and always will in the future, is great writing.

I have a ridiculously short internet-attention-span, as I’m sure many others do. When I’m reading news or features online, I rarely click on the video or audio attachments – I just want to consume what I’m reading as quickly as possible and move on. I’m sure this isn’t true for everyone, but for me the appendages don’t fit naturally with the consumption of a story. Many other features of online journalism really do appeal to me, such as the ability to map stories and use other interactions to illustrate a point, or encourage the reader to explore information on their own.  Simply tacking items more at home on broadcast media onto a website I find is really under-using the ability of the internet to communicate information. This is natural though – we do what we know. It’s as obvious as making a great book into an average film. The internet has much more to offer. But despite all this, text still reigns supreme.

Having said that, there’s a lot to proud of with internet journalism this week – it should inspire everyone that the might of the notorious Carter-Ruck law firm can be taken on by a few ‘ordinary’ people with Twitter accounts. Maybe the internet manifesto was right about that, but let us not forget that it couldn’t have been done without brilliant journalism, paid for by The Guardian.