The Slugger Awards 2008: Political bloggers

Today we announce the category of political blogger of the year. Anyone who blogs consistently on Northern Irish poltiics – Slugger will not be included in the running. One of the great advantages of the blogosphere is it’s capacity to generate the kind of high level (and sometimes low level) discourse that virtually impossible to to generate by older more traditional media.It constitutes, as Jeff Jarvis points out in his blog today, a new creative class of citizen writer/citizen reporter/citizen photographer that has the capacity to shake up old assumptions, turn them over and offer new and diverse views of old problems.

It’s still the case that far beyond the shores/borders of Northern Ireland, no nation’s political class has yet found a convincing way to meet the challenges of that new, disaggregated and difficult to control class of political commenters (how do you control a photographer whom you don’t even know is a photographer.

In the last year, there has been a slow flowering of new bloggers from right across the political spectrum. And some older ones who are clearly beginning to find the measure of their own stride. People like Mairtin O’Muilleoir, Jenny from South Belfast, Three Thousands Versts of Lonliness, Burke’s Corner, Will Crawley, A Tangled Web, El BLogador, O’Conall Street or Belfast Stoop.

The key to this award will be to make sure that we cast out net widely and bring any new bloggers who are quietly plying their trade out there. If you have your own blog, pass on the word. Ask your readers to tell us why they think your blog should win it. All the nomination threads will be kept open until judging concludes around mid September.

Usual Slugger Award rules here – negativity gets deleted on sight.