Sunday, October 08, 2006
Writing about Blogging
Catching up with the papers I discovered an interesting article in Saturday's Western Mail about the use of blogs by the political parties. The author is kind enough to refer to this blog as one of the most popular in Wales. We will see.
Where I will take issue with the article is its premise that blogging has been embraced by the political parties as the way forward. Whereas all the main parties have started to get into internet media in a big way the truth is that those at the top, and many politicians for that matter remain suspicious of blogging simply because they cannot control its content and its direction. By their nature blogs are too individualistic to be anything more than the personal fiefdom of the politician writing them.
This is not a problem if they are being written by the Party leaders but this is not the case and I suspect that if they all did decide that it was the way forward then they would delegate an aide to write it for them. That really defeats the purpose.
There is another article on blogging on the site of Agence France Presse, written by Phil Hazlewood, the brother of the Welsh Conservative's Chief Press Officer. It is posted on 1 October 2008 and is entitled "Party politics goes high-tech in the battle for new, younger votes". Unfortunately, to read it you have to pay. As it mentions this site and quotes myself, Iain Dale and Labour's official Conference blogger, Jonathan Roberts, then I imagine that you may consider it worth the money. If so go to www.afp.com and search the news articles posted under the UK banner.
Where I will take issue with the article is its premise that blogging has been embraced by the political parties as the way forward. Whereas all the main parties have started to get into internet media in a big way the truth is that those at the top, and many politicians for that matter remain suspicious of blogging simply because they cannot control its content and its direction. By their nature blogs are too individualistic to be anything more than the personal fiefdom of the politician writing them.
This is not a problem if they are being written by the Party leaders but this is not the case and I suspect that if they all did decide that it was the way forward then they would delegate an aide to write it for them. That really defeats the purpose.
There is another article on blogging on the site of Agence France Presse, written by Phil Hazlewood, the brother of the Welsh Conservative's Chief Press Officer. It is posted on 1 October 2008 and is entitled "Party politics goes high-tech in the battle for new, younger votes". Unfortunately, to read it you have to pay. As it mentions this site and quotes myself, Iain Dale and Labour's official Conference blogger, Jonathan Roberts, then I imagine that you may consider it worth the money. If so go to www.afp.com and search the news articles posted under the UK banner.
