The Wardman Wire

After the UK Elections at the start of May I added some Headline feeds to the sidebar of the Wardman Wire, with the aim of providing an “at a glance” coverage of the political blogosphere and the mainstream media.

I am now reviewing this, and I would like to hear from readers before I make any material changes. In general it seems to be working

The objective of having the Headlines in the sidebar is to show at a glance of what is going on in UK political blogging and politics from a variety of perspectives.

I’d be grateful for links back to this article and any help to gain attention, as this is important for the blog.

Feeds Required

The aim is to have a mix of feeds, so that I pick up all stories - including those that would be missed by some blogs. At present I am using the selection below.

Blog Feeds - A sample of the Blogosphere

I have about 10-12 spots. Ideally these need to be updated several times a day, and cover most political, some news and some personal stories. This is the current selection, but I may have couple of spots for interesting suggestions. Opinionated feeds are fine, but they must have broad coverage and not be *too* extreme. Overly “sweary” feeds are not OK for this job.

(Cartoon Credit: www.weblogcartoons.com.)

It is a major concern that I do not currently have highish volume feeds from a Left or Leftish perspective, or covering Scottish Politics. I’ve considered building a Scottish aggregator, but that would take a little time.

• “Left” England Feed: I did have Recess Monkey, but he went silent for several days, and the current “gossip:news” ratio is a bit high for this job. Sorry Alex. Any suggestions?
• “Right” England Feed: Iain Dale’s Diary covers most stories.
• “Scotland” Feed: I am looking for a highish volume Scottish politics blog which covers all the main stories. Currently vacant. Any ideas?
• “Wales” Feed: Currently I am using The Blamerbell Briefs, which seems to do the job reasonably.
• “Ireland” feed: Slugger O Toole fits the bill ideally.
• “Conservative Party Activist” feed: ConservativeHome, obviously - but is there a news feed which is not just one article per day.
• “Labour Party Activist” feed: LabourHome, obviously.
• “LibDem Party Activist” feed: Lib Dem Voice will stay - now that it will stay alive.
• “UK Polling Report“ and “Political Betting“ give good general analysis of UK Politics.
• Other feeds: “Pickled Politics“ covers general politics “with an Asian tinge”, and so covers some gaps missed by the others.
• Other feeds: “Ellee Seymour Missing Persons“ feed deserves the profile.

“Mainstream Media” Feeds

I have a selection of these feeds, from main newspapers and publishers. Any more suggestions are welcome:

• BBC UK Politics
• Guardian Politics
• Telegraph UK News
• Times Online News Feed
• FT - UK News
• Economist Analysis and News

I could include other mainstream media feeds, but I think I have a fair selection - suggestions would be welcome.

Is there another News Magazine with stature to be a foil to the Economist? I’m not sure that there is. Private Eye is the only one that springs to mind, but they don’t do RSS or online news.

What I am looking for:

These are the holes in my current coverage:

• Left or Leftish England Feed
• Scottish Politics

I would also welcome a feed covering “European” News. That means the EU and European Parliament, but also other stories.

Wrapping-up

That’s it, except for the techie bits. Please help with suggestions in the comments if you can.

And thanks to Prague Tory, who mentioned this facility in this article.

Technical Notes

I have also made a couple of more “technical” changes:

• As mentioned above, if you hover your mouse over the headline, a popup telltale will give you the first part of the story. Where the RSS feeds contained full stories rather than an exerpt the popup fields could be very large. I have now limited the length of these popups to about 100 characters - which has reduced the download time of my front page quite significantly (by about 25%). It is still enough to get the gist of the story - which is the idea.
• I have also “nofollowed” these links - as they are intended purely as a summary of what is going on - rather than to indicate that I want to draw attention to a particular article.

[tags]matt wardman, rss feeds, advice requested, please comment, who should I link to, recess monkey, blamerbell briefs, iain dale, prague tory, scotland, scottish politics, european news, libdem voice, labourhome. conservativehome, pickled politics, uk polling report, political betting[/tags]