The Wardman Wire

How do I choose my 20 blogs to recommend for Iain Dale’s “top political blogs” list? Let’s look at how other people have done it.

Criteria, criteria, criteria

According to James Higham, Iain Dale’s criteria for rating the blogs for his Guide to Political Blogging can be summarised like this

I marked each blog out of ten on the following 10 areas: design; frequency of posting; writing ability; personality; comment; humour; range; interaction; popularity; independence of thought. This generated a mark out of 100.

That definition - which I would summarise as “paradise for statistical masochists” - is enough to explain on its own why he changed the approach this year. To be fair, collating results from hundreds of emails may be almost as bad.

Two other sets of criteria were elaborated in 2006 by James Higham and Tiberias Gracchus.

And what am I going to do?

Easy: Choose 20 blogs that I have enjoyed reading for at least a couple of months, and spend the rest of the time doing something else.

Apart from one example, I am sticking with independent blogs.

Blogs I enjoy, and why I like them

OK, here’s the list in no particular order:

• Pickled Politics - Politics, current affairs, media and society “with a South Asian” tinge. There is nothing else in the niche that comes close.
• Slugger O’Toole - No one else does such good coverage of Northern Ireland, but the civil war is still gong on in the comments box.
• Thunder Dragon - Provocative and inventive, especially for this post about how to sort out the USA. About 22.

• Iain Dale - Enjoyable reading, and covers nearly all stories.
• The Poliblogs. A new blog started in July by Garbo (not Greta). Essentially a roundup of whatever is the current issue daily or more often. The slogan is “Monitoring the blogs so you don’t have to!”. Run by a political junkie who chooses to remain pseudonymous. All done manually by the look of it, so enjoy it now in case he gets tired. 60 posts so far. I have added the RSS feed to my aggregator-sidebar. One to watch.
• Select Society - Scottish, thoughtful.
• Paul Linford - Excellent writer, local to me, makes me think, and has a correct view of Alistair Campbell to boot.
• Dave’s Part - Argues a case different to my view without personal invective.
• Ellee Seymour - Reading it feels being hugged. Good on PR. Good on Politics. Not quite so good on technology.
• Ordovicius - I agree with about 30% of what he says, but he says it vigorously. Doesn’t bow down to sacred cows, especially English ones.
• Philobiblon - Politics, culture and history through a greenish, feminist lens. Total absence of the grating variety of feminism that used to be the stock at my University. Natalie Bennett also authors My Paris Your Paris amd My London Your London - both recommended.
• Articles of Faith - One of the first Times blogs. Ruth Gledhill covers religion and politics. More popular than most realise. Heaviy trafficked. Sent me 1500 visitors in one day with a single link in May. Regularly breaks stories.
• Millennium Elephant - Fluffy end of the Lib Dems. Politics and the rest.
• Bloggerheads - Tim Ireland. Some excellent videos and animations. Some excellent campaigns. Occasionally barks up the wrong tree.
• UK Polling Report - A reference source to which I find myself returning. Good analysis. Good debate.
• Gavin Ayling - A Councillor from somewhere south of Watford who is more concerned with function than image.
• Calthorpe’s Corner. A new blog from a Birmingham Councillor. One to watch.
• Mike Rouse. Chief Technology Officer (i.e., ITMan-thinker-gofer-menderer - I know how these things work) at 18 Doughty Street and player in the MessageSpace://creative setup. The only insider-technologist in these operations to blog about the technology of online politics. About Politics and Technology. One to watch.
• Weblogcartoons. Probably one of UKs most popular cartoon blogs after GapingVoid. Focusses on human condition from a whimsical viewpoint. Cartoons regularly feature on the Wardman Wire.

Wrapping up

You will see that that is 19.

I’m looking for one more locally based blog written about a particular place. If you know one, please give me a shout below.

Tags: top 20 blogs, guide to political blogging[tags]top 20 blogs, guide to political blogging[/tags]