L'esprit d'escalier - am I Perez Hilton?

I was talking with someone at a DWP event yesterday who compared my role in the welfare-to-work industry to that of Perez Hilton. At the time it made me a bit grumpy, but I couldn't place my finger on why.

Thinking back later, I realised that it was because it trivialises what I'm doing. Perez Hilton is a Hollywood gossip-monger. He trades in rumours that people want to read, but which have little real-world import.

I would argue that what I'm doing with the newswire, the provider database etc. is fundamentally different. It's genuinely important and useful to many people in the welfare-to-work field who wouldn't otherwise know what's going on. The reason some people call it gossip, is because I occasionally publish news that some people don't want to appear.

Senior DWP staff and the top tier of management in prime contractors already know most of the stuff I put out. They just don't pass all the information on to everyone else in an open and timely manner. This is where the site comes in. I don't dig in secret files or bug offices (although the DWP did apparently look under the desks in a recent meeting to see if I was there). I mainly sit at the end of the phone, waiting for people to overcome their fear of getting into trouble (they don't) and send me information they feel other people should see.

One very concrete example that still gets used against the site is the publishing of results from the ESF round last year ahead of time. As it happens, there were very good reasons to publish this data: primes had been told the results, but had been banned from telling their subcontractors, many of whom were desperate to know whether their businesses could continue or not. Most primes, subcontractors and DWP staff could see no good reason for this ban, but had no way of challenging it 'within' the system. At it also happens, the results I published were 100% correct - not a single contract was changed between then and the final results some months later.

But maybe I'm just puffing myself up (or demeaning Perez Hilton, if such a thing is possible). After all, I'm writing big long self-justifying blog posts. What do you think? Gossip, or news?