A few weeks ago I fell asleep on my sofa and woke up at half past midnight to find political blogger Iain Dale on my telly, reading through the day’s newspaper headlines. It was at that moment that I realised that political blogging, which has been huge in America for a few years with sites like the Daily Kos and Huffington Post getting more readers than The Times, had finally hit the mainstream here in the UK. The BBC’s Alan Connor recently put together a comprehensive list of political blogs if you’d like to have a look at what’s out there.
With political blogs getting lots of attention from the media and political strategists alike, and Manchester playing host to the Labour Party Conference from 24-28 September, the Political Bloggers Panel being organised by local blogger Manchizzle is likely to be a popular event.
On the podium at Urbis from 4pm on Sunday the 24th of September will be Norman Geras, Professor Emeritus at Manchester University and author of Normblog, the Press Gazette’s Martin Stabe and Bill Jones, a former Manchester University lecturer and author of several books on politics who blogs at Skipper.
You can find more details of this free event on Manchizzle or over on the Urbis website .
bookmark this post: del.icio.us l Digg l Furl l ma.gnolia l Newsvine l reddit l Yahoo MyWeb l Track with co.mments
Umm… Half past midnight on News 24? Is that what you call mainstream? I am not sure in any case that Iain Dale would have been chosen because of his blog or because of one of his other qualifications:
“right of centre political commentator, author, publisher, bookseller, radio presenter, TV pundit, former Conservative candidate, … former lobbyist”
Hi David. It seems to me that Iain Dale is primarily known as a political blogger and I think most of his current appearances as political commentator, radio presenter, tv pundit, etc are tied to his blogging.
Half past midnight is, admittedly, late but it’s a mainstream news channel. The point was that the guy and his blog are being taken seriously. I know several BBC journalists, editors (and higher up) who openly admit to subscribing to RSS feeds from Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale and others. The blogs might not be mainstream yet but they are certainly already exerting an impact upon the coverage from mainstream media organisations.