Do you feel threatened by blogs & their capacity to break news stories? 

No because the decent blogs aren’t really amateur blogs, they’re journalists with a sideline who’d have broken something elsewhere anyway. Freelancers, like myself, mainly cover features as that’s where the money is so blogs can actually be a good source.

How much do you use blogs to source news stories verses PRs?

I don’t look to blogs, other that the Google guys as that’s the only official outlet. If you Google a subject and a blog comes up I’ll look at it but I wouldn’t look out for a blog specifically.
 
Have you ever sourced a news story via Twitter?

No, you’d have to scour an awful lot of feeds to get the very rare story.

Do you prefer Twitter for personal or professional communications?
 
I don’t use twitter, other than to find out what my lazyso-called web designer who’s supposed to be building me a site is up to instead of doing what he’s paid to do – it’s amazing how people can lie to you and then you look at what they’ve done on Twitter and they’ve been fiddling with software and sharing ‘in’ jokes with their peer group of six geeks rather than burying their nan for sixth time or getting over some awful lurgy.

Did you have a favourite tech story in 2008?
 
I loved the way that Google allowed brand bidding and then tried to go on about democratising the web. I love this corporate speak which assumes people are stupid. They did it because it allowed them to make a pile more money on people bidding on brand names that weren’t theirs to bid on and then pushed up the cost of anyone bidding on their own brand name. Come on Google, at least be honest!

What do you think will be the hottest tech issue in 2009?
 
Digital Britain final report, plans for fibre roll out, mobile marketing (again!) and how free sites and low margin ISPs will survive the recession.

What is the worst PR pitch you have ever had?
 
They’re mostly pretty bad, to be honest! They always look for a journalist to solve a problem the PR has.. I’ve got a guy flying in from the States please interview him so I look like I’ve got lots of contacts… you should really interview our UK MD… he knows loads and we’ve got a day of interview slots lined up (which are presumably looking pretty empty!).

Good PR pitches come up with something of use for the journalist and recognise what they do as an individual – no point pitching me news stories, for eg, as I don’t do them.

Response sources can be pretty funny. PR’s try to get clients in for all kinds of reasons, like one recently that said her online guy should be in a personal finance feature because they take paypal payments..! etc..etc..

SEAN HARGRAVE IS THE FORMER SUNDAY TIMES INNOVATION EDITOR TURNED FREELANCE. HE CONTRIBUTES TO THE GUARDIAN, NEW MEDIA AGE AND TECHNOLOGY SUPPLEMENTS FOR THE TIMES AND THE TELEGRAPH