The Total Politics 100
Following up from Iain Dale’s 2007 Guide to Political Blogging in the UK, Total Politics are doing the 2008 version. You can email in your ten nominations to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com; rules and more information are here.
Sunny Hundall and Bob Piper, two people I have a lot of time for and who I have put in my top ten nomination, are not supporting the project; their reasons are up at Liberal Conspiracy and Bob’s blog respectively. Broadly, their reasons for not supporting the 08 poll are that Iain has been rather condescending to leftie blogs of late and, by not linking to them, making it unnecessarily difficult for visitors to see the quality or otherwise of those blogs for themselves.
I came ninety-second amongst left-of-centre bloggers in the 2007 edition. No, really - the proof is here (the blog was called unoriginalname38 at the time). I was really excited by that and, in particular, that it was in an actual, honest-to-goodness, published book. I hadn’t expected it and it was a lift to me ‘as a blogger’ to see myself in the listing. I don’t know whether Iain doesn’t link deliberately - I hope he’ll take notice of what Sunny and Bob have said - but the positive effects of the bloggers’ lists mean they merit participation.
I would add, though, that there are some methodological problems with the poll. I might be everyone’s eleventh favourite blogger - the top ten wouldn’t have to be the same for everyone - but not feature at all in the list.
xD.
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:55 pm
A big problem here is that Iain says you must vote for ten blogs, so someone like me who has fewer than ten blogs that they read will not be enfranchised. Are there really that many people with enough time to keep up with ten blogs?
July 22nd, 2008 at 9:13 pm
OJ said
Well, bloggers generally do…
That, though may be part of the problem. How many people who don’t write a blog read blogs?
RSS feeds are an easy way of keeping up to speed with blogs and other websites. They can be part of your email programme and you’re only aware of their presence if there’s something new to read. Although a technically innaccurate description, the end result is ‘push’ rather than ‘pull’; the information comes to you rather than you having to go and see if there’s any new information.
I’m pleased, though, that I’m in your top ten!
xD.