The unspoken convention that the broadcasters get "first dibs" on questions is just one of many lobby traditions respected by politicians and hacks for no good reason other than this is how things have always been done. There have been glimpses of reform. It is good, for example, that lobby correspondents who had not kept their register of interests up to date were recently given a slap on the wrist. Briefings to the lobby are no longer unattributable. We are now permitted to say that these are given by the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman and it is possible to identify who that person is (currently Stephen Field, a career civil servant who was previously communications chief at the Treasury). But lobby journalists continue to lunch MPs in the traditional manner (often two hacks from different newspapers per politician) in return for stories. The offices of the press gallery itself, physically embedded at the heart of parliament, reinforce the sense that journalists are umbilically connected to the institution. The effect is to lock reporters in to the political culture of the Commons.

Is there any evidence that a different arrangement would produce better political coverage? It is certainly possible to argue that the best political coverage of the 2010 election did not come from the men in suits, but from the lobby's tiny band of women: Allegra Stratton at the Guardian and Cathy Newman at Channel 4 were outstanding. Rosa Prince at the Telegraph, Marie Woolf at the Sunday Times and Melissa Kite at the Sunday Telegraph have also established themselves as respected figures and the Observer's Anushka Asthana got off to a flying start during her first election in the lobby. For some time, Ann Treneman, at The Times, has been the best parliamentary sketch writer. 

But the real star of the election came from outside the lobby altogether. The Guardian's Marina Hyde, sometime sports writer, sometime showbiz columnist, has shown how it should be done. Her piece on the "spin room" at the Sky leaders' debate, "The Live Abortion of Democracy", was a merciless dissection of the relationship between politicians, their spinners and the media and, at the same time, a masterclass in how political journalism could be done. Her observation of the spin room could equally apply to the lobby: "A...type of self-regard is abroad in the spin room, people appearing to feel personally validated to be there, and firmly under the illusion that the public would kill to get a look in. In fact, the public would kill if they got a look in, which is something altogether different."

Why does any of this matter, beyond the point that it can't be healthy that the lobby is even less representative of the ethnic, class and gender breakdown of wider society than parliament itself?