The Wardman Wire

Back in early December I posted a run-down of the list of weekly columns on the Wardman Wire, using the excuse that the site “has been a bit of a building site recently with a lot of changes”. I’m pleased to say that the move from a personal political blog to a site with a wider team of writers is nearly complete - so there may be a bit more stability round here for the next few months (at least in terms of who is writing).

This is an extra Blog Platform column to map out where we are and where we may be going.

What Happens each Week

I’m doing a rundown by day this time. There’s more to say, but I’ll keep this post as short as I can manage. Now that the rate of change on the blog is slowing down (at least in terms of new and guest writers), I’ll see if I can be more reliable at making sure that things appear on the right day.

Our practice is - with one or two exceptions - to publish the column each day at 11:00am, to give time for the article to hit the RSS feed in time for the lunch break. Then nothing else appears until perhaps 4pm.

As ever, the best way not to miss anything is to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Nearly Every day

“The Daily Roundup” is currently a roundup of 10 or a dozen newspaper stories designed to provide “blog fodder” for our readers. It focuses on interesting and occasionally unusual stories. On good days it is published around 1am; on not quite so good days with breakfast or a little later. As you can see from the podcast player in the sidebar, we experimented with a daily podcast - I hope to take that forward, but I’m thinking about a practical approach.

The “Morning Funny” (which needs a better name) is a cartoon or joke which appears at the start of the day - usually at around 9:00am. There are agreements in place with 5 or 6 different cartoonists to reproduce their work, and I sometimes re-recycle a joke from the Adam Smith Institute Jokester; make that “used to re-recycle” - he has retired.

Monday

“The Day Job” is about what bloggers do when they are not blogging. I have only done one of these, and intend to increase the frequency.

Tuesday

“Politics Decoded” is Garbo’s weekly political comment column - running for 6 months now. Garbo publishes his “bon mots” before lunch on a Tuesday with the reliability of Mr Gordon asking Mr Cameron questions at PMQs instead of answering them.

Wednesday

A double dose on Wednesdays to provide a refuge from Prime Ministers’ Questions.

The Britblog Podcast is an audio version of the Britblog Roundup, which appears each Sunday (or Monday if late). The Wardman Wire is only place on the Internet with a library of the “Britblog Roundup” slot on Radio 5.

A member of the Britblog Team is interviewed for the “Pods and Blogs” programme by Chris Vallance, which is broadcast at 2:30am on Tuesday. An excerpt of the interview (and usually a bonus item on the end) appears here on a Wednesday morning around 11:00am.

At present R5 are considering some changes to the Pods and Blogs programme where a member of the team is interviewed each week - they want to hear your comments.

On alternate Wednesdays Simon Barrow, the Director of the Ekklesia Think Tank writes a column entitled “Thinking Aloud” (decal still in development) placing current political questions in a moral, social and ethical context. If you don’t want to miss one, all you have to do is visit every single week.

I have a plot at the back of my find to use the “other” weeks to invite contributors from minority communities to do some “thinking aloud” of their own.

Thursday

Thursday is Democracy Day on the Wardman Wire.

In the afternoon we will be publishing (from March 2008) a unique multi-Parliament Report (decal still in development). Initially this will be reports from Scottish Parliament in Holyrood, the Senedd in Cardiff, and the UK Parliament in Westminster. I hope to add Stormont and Brussels as soon as possible.

I’d be quite interested in including a report from the House of Lords - the civilised bit of Parliament - if I could find a reporter.

And in the evening Chris Hawes, who writes the Thunderdragon blog, has a bi-weekly column looking about democracy: We The People. This has only just started, and we are thinking about what to do with the intermediate weeks - ideas are welcome.

Friday

Friday is different, with no fixed columns at present, and no planned posts beyond the Daily Roundup and the morning joke or cartoon. I’m open to good ideas for Friday’s.

I’m wondering about inventing “Freeform Fridays“, where I will give a platform to anyone with something interesting to say - a sort of virtual Speakers’ Corner. In my mind there needs to be somewhere on the blog which is relatively unstructured, to be a total change from the quite tightly timetabled nature of the rest of the week.

I’d see that as an opportunity for young or new bloggers to address a slightly wider audience - one of my priorities for asking people to write columns has been to look for good new writers, who would like the opportunity to write for a different audience or in a different style.

I’d like to see articles about eclectic political subjects on Fridays - for example how the mistresses of Charles II have an impact on life today, or a piece about the history of Hogarth, or even something about how political eras and movements can be studied by the distinctive hats they wore.

Friday also needs to be more relaxed, partly because that is the feel of most of our workplaces and homes, but also to move the blog into the “weekend” mode. I’d welcome any suggestions you have in the comments box below.

Saturday

The weekend on the Wardman Wire aims to have a different feel to weekdays. During the week we are more politically focussed. At weekends, like the papers, we try to put our feet up and think.

On Saturdays, David Keen - who blogs at St Aidan to Abbey Manor - writes the Touching Base column, which is a weekly reflection on current affairs drawing on David’s background and day job as a Vicar serving in Yeovil.

Sunday

We aim to do another double header on Sundays, but don’t always make it.

The Politics Podcast is an item taken from Matt Revell’s weekly politics programme on Wolverhampton Community Radio.

Blog Platform is my own column looking each week at an aspect of political blogging. It might cover any aspect of the subject - planned columns for the next few weeks include an examination of how political bloggers are borrowing ideas from the mainstream media since the start of 2008, and an extended look at ways in which new political bloggers can start to get questions into the political debate.

Wrapping-Up

I’m going to stop there, but there will be 2 more articles following this one:

• The first will talk about the “occasional columns” on the Wardman Wire.
• The second will discuss areas where there may still need to be some developments, and where I am hoping to take the blog over the next few months.

Tags: wardman wire, new directions, weekly schedule, columnists, garbo, thunderdragon, ekklesia, politics podcast, blog platform, a daily roundup, the day job, politics decoded, britblog podcast, we the people, touching base, blog platform, not a number, free speech, hot issue[tags]wardman wire, new directions, weekly schedule, columnists, garbo, thunderdragon, ekklesia, politics podcast, blog platform, a daily roundup, the day job, politics decoded, britblog podcast, we the people, touching base, blog platform, not a number, free speech, hot issue[/tags]