{"id":1652,"date":"2007-09-28T07:30:09","date_gmt":"2007-09-28T07:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2007\/09\/28\/uk-political-blogs-are-rubbish\/"},"modified":"2008-02-02T13:14:44","modified_gmt":"2008-02-02T13:14:44","slug":"uk-political-blogs-are-rubbish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2007\/09\/uk-political-blogs-are-rubbish\/","title":{"rendered":"“UK political blogs are rubbish”"},"content":{"rendered":"

So say some people<\/a> who’ve just launched a pro blogging company with a UK political blog<\/a> at its heart. Way to get linkage, guys! (Oh, wait… Damn…)<\/small><\/p>\n

The thing is, it’s true and we all know it. But we’ve all known it for the best part of three years<\/a> – where have these guys been?<\/p>\n

And why are they seemingly ripping off the concept that was tried (and failed so badly the URL is now a generic directory site) with the last attempt at a “pro” UK political blog, Mink Media’s “The Honourable Fiend” (launched in November 2004, briefly entertaining, but soon barely updated or read)? Hell, even the name – “Westmonster” from Messy Media – is reminiscent… (Or have they been reading entertaining EU blog Berlaymonster<\/a>? Or is it just a stupidly obvious semi-pun?)<\/small><\/p>\n

Most importantly, though, why do they think that launching a garishly-designed pink blog full of short “witty”, gossipy entries is the way to make money with online political coverage?<\/p>\n

“If we were to try and do Wonkettte over here, I think it would fall flat, because the voice is not something that a British audience would respond to… Wonkette is very much a Washington title. I think we would like Westmonster to be more about politics in the round… It’s about making these people [politicians] into personalities,” say the founders.<\/p>\n

Hang on, did Tim Ireland<\/a> have a point after all? Guido<\/a> – if this is your fault… (Heh…)<\/p>\n

Welcome to the world of UK political blogs, chaps – you’ve got some catching up to do…<\/p>\n

(Word of advice, though – you’re not off to a bad start, but a decent proportion of blog readers – far more than the web average – use Firefox with AdAware, so your MPU, left-hand skyscraper and top banner aren’t going to show up. Your advertisers aren’t going to be best pleased if readers don’t see their ads, and as a commercial venture, that could be fatal… Know your audience…)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So say some people who’ve just launched a pro blogging company with a UK political blog at its heart. Way to get linkage, guys! (Oh, wait… Damn…) The thing is, it’s true and we all know it. But we’ve all … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[41],"class_list":["post-1652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","tag-blogging"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}