The Lib Dem Blog of the Year Awards debate

At the start of last month I wrote a post suggesting it was time to freshen up the Lib Dem Blog of the Year Awards. There was some debate in the comments at the time and now, as I hoped, others have taken up the idea.

Love and Liberty (Alex Wilcock) has supported some of my ideas and in particular volunteered to resume his unofficial role of promoting the award for the best individual post if the organisers agree to reinstate it. His offer of help to the award organisers was matched by Somebody's Flung the Cat Again (Jennie Rigg).

Alex was also forthright about the way this year's awards were run:

In previous years, nominations closed at the end of August and shortlists were published in early September, giving weeks for many different blogs to get attention and celebration and, as the BOTYs are intended, to give “a fun way to celebrate the talent in the Lib Dem blogosphere, whilst introducing you to some blogs you might not have read before”. 

This year the shortlists were published on September 22nd – just two hours before the awards were given out. They may as well have skipped straight to the winners, for all the attention the shortlistees could get. No wonder so few people turned up. 

Then, after the awards, though this surely isn’t down to LDV, in previous years all the shortlistees for the main award – not just one “Blogger of the Year” – got to interview the Leader. Nick might be happier with a one-to-one, but that’s not the point; that was to engage more people, more styles, more perspectives.

Another contribution came from Liberal Burblings (Paul Walter), who told us that blogging (at least as understood by the judges of the Blog of the Year Awards) is dead and we should be giving awards to tweeters instead.

He was taken to task for this by The Very Fluffy Diary of Millennium Dome, Elephant (Richard Flowers), who accused him of "anti-intellectual sneering".

In fact it was worse than that. He actually accused him of "ANTI-INTELLECTUAL SNEERING".

My own view is that blogging is certainly not dead but that the style of it encouraged of late by the Blog of the Year Awards - pretending you are a commentator in a national daily - probably is.

At the very least we need, as I said in my original post, "some new, varied categories to widen the pool of potential winners".

Anyway, what do you think?

Later. The View from Creeting St Peter (Mark Valladares) joined the debate last night too.