The Wardman Wire

Looking around, I see that competition in the political blog world in the UK is starting to hot up, which must be a good thing after a not very innovative 2007 - when relatively little progress was made in the world of independent political blogging.

In support of that statement, remember that the UK independent Political Blog “A-List” (which consists, more or less, of Iain Dale, Guido, Slugger, Political Betting, UK Polling Report and Conservative Home) did not change from Autumn 2006 to Autumn 2007.

How was that possible in such a volatile world as the blogosphere?

There was more disturbance among lower profile blogs, with new arrivals such as Our Kingdom and Ordovicius, and Liberal Conspiracy. I expect all of these to make significant progress in 2008.

It would take a full article to develop this theme, but here are some straws in the wind pointing towards a more competitive environment:

• A plethora of new roundups, including a new one I found today from Tony Sharp called “Six of the Best“. It’s actually a daily feature.
• In addition to things I am doing, there are now new politics podcasts Wolverhampton Politics and Realpolitik.
• The talk about an overhaul of Labour Home. We need vigorous grassroots politics in all parts of the spectrum.
• The new Centre Right newswire / magazine from Conservative Home.
• Many people adding new angles and features to their blogs. This goes from Iain Dale adding a roundup (Daley Dozen), many more guest bloggers and a political performance index to the Diary via Garbo adding some opinion content to The Poliblogs to Tony Sharp adding his own roundup as discussed above.

A key question is whether political bloggers will be competing for a larger share of cake, or seeking to enlarge the cake by drawing in a “non-politico” reader base.

Whether we manage to reach the general public - as opposed to the specific public - is in our own hands.

Tags: political blogging, signs for 2008[tags]political blogging, signs for 2008[/tags]