Is nobody blogging about the BBC's The Editors Blog anymore?

I've generally been a big fan of the BBC The Editors Blog since it was launched. Although not everybody agrees with the points of view put across by BBC News staff on the blog, I find it an interesting forum of discussion, and a useful attempt to try and grasp how the new interactivity of the internet impacts on the day-to-day decisions made by news editors.

However, there is one bit of functionality on the blog which I've been noticing more and more - for all the wrong reasons. The right-hand navigation of the blog features a section called 'Blogs linking here'. This is meant to show four links to recent blog posts that have referenced or responded to The Editors blog.

I say meant to, because of the four links on display at the time of writing, the Reportr.net article about advertising is from November 6th, and the Buzzmachine article is from November 12th. Have there really only been two further articles worth linking to in the last three months?

The Editors blog provides links to a Google blogsearch and Technorati search for posts that reference it, and even a cursory glance turns up some interesting posts from just the last couple of weeks.

Adrian Monck makes the point that the amount of cash involved in the Conway affair is small fry compared to the sums involved in other news stories, or indeed for that matter, the salaries of BBC presenters. 'Thoughts of Nigel' has his own thoughts on the issue of whether the BBC should use images from social networking websites in news reports, raised by Steve Herrmann:

"I have a rather objective opinion on this. Anything published on social networking sites,is to me in the public domain and therefore its use can be sanctioned".

There have also been some good blog posts about the fall-out from the Archbishop of Canterbury's interview mentioning Sharia law. Politics at the Parish Pump argues that the BBC was at fault for sensationalising the contents of Rowan Williams interview, despite being "about as stout a defender of the BBC as you get among political bloggers".

Storyteller's World meanwhile took issue with the way the BBC covered the follow-up of the interview, with a direct challenge to the BBC:

"whatever [the BBC] claims their policy may be, I don't believe it was what they were actually doing last week and even on Monday, when selective interviewing of more of Rowan's enemies than of his friends continued to misrepresent what I perceived as the level of support for him".

Meantime, Musing Market's Blog was complaining that despite, in their words, nearly $7bn per annum of state funding, "The BBC's flagship televisual news programme gets it wrong yet again when it comes to compiling a simple markets round up".

This time, rather than reporting market figures for the U.S. when actually there was a national holiday and the markets were closed, Newsnight misplaced a decimal point and turned a 0.8 fall on the FTSE-100 to an 80 point fall. Not quite enough to send stockbrokers heading to the nearest office window, but still a serious mistake.

All of these seemed perfectly good candidates for links in the 'Blogs linking here' section, provided it is being updated.

I've no doubt the answer is "Resources, dear boy, resources", but it strikes me that if the BBC isn't able to keep the feature up-to-date then it should drop it. Or, it should change the format to be more of a del.icio.us link stream, like that used higher on the page for mentions of the BBC in the press. That seems to need a little less editorial steer and production time.

One way or another though, having a stale piece of content like that on the page risks undermining the credibility of the effort being put into The Editors Blog as a whole.