BBC dominates list naming top political journalists

Total Politics, political blogger Iain Dale’s recently launched magazine, tomorrow publishes its list of top political journalists, as voted for by over 100 MPs, the magazine’s Facebook group of 500, and 130 lobby journalists. It can be viewed online, after registering, on the e-zine site.

Iain Dale told Journalism.co.uk that it’s “surprising that the BBC seems more loved by Conservative MPs and Labour MPs, but few will be surprised that Labour MPs rate Andrew Marr and James Naughtie highly.

“The surprise is that Andrew Neil doesn’t figure in the Top 20 of either party. Conservative MPs have shown a masochistic tendency by voting Jeremy Paxman at eight, but Labour MPs don’t include him in their Top 20 at all.”

Topping the overall list:
1. Evan Davis
2. Jeremy Paxman
3. Matthew Parris
4. Nick Robinson
5. John Humphrys

So who do the Tories like…?
1. Evan Davis
2. Jonathan Oliver
3. Jeremy Vine
4. Carolyn Quinn
5. Martha Kearney

And who do Labour like….?
1. Andrew Marr
2. Michael White
3. David Aaronovitch
4. Polly Toynbee
5. Evan Davis

And journalists themselves…?
1. Nick Robinson
2. Jeremy Paxman
3. Evan Davis
4. David Dimbleby
5. John Humphrys

And the top blog…? A certain Iain Dale’s Diary, followed by Tim Montgomerie (2) and Guido Fawkes (3).

Similar posts:

• BBC’s Nick Robinson admits he toed government line on Iraq too strongly
• New Telegraph political blog on the way
• Are you on the Journa-list? Probably not if you’re a blogger
• New media types among Evening Standard’s 1000 most influential Londoners
• Green paper tigers

Political blogger Iain Dale launches TotalPolitics.com

TotalPolitics, the website published by former 18DoughtyStreet blogger Iain Dale, has gone live today.

The site and magazine, which are described as ‘a lifestyle magazine dedicated to all things political’, will report on all that’s positive within the UK’s political scene.

Three group blogs feature on the site in addition to political blog listings and a database of political speeches and quotations

The majority of the content from the print edition will feature online alongside these new features, Dale wrote in a blog post on his personal blog.

Similar posts:

• NYTimes blog to be published in print
• Political magazine Seven returns to online roots
• Shiny in top 100 UK blogs
• Imagine Publishing launches user-focused gaming site
• Round-up: Open house event at The Telegraph on political blogging

Election 2.0: blogs, video and mobile streaming out in force for local election coverage

The BBC’s coverage of today’s local elections will feature live blogging, with comments being expertly sifted by Newsnight and BBC News 24 presenter Emily Maitlis, assisted by leading political bloggers Iain Dale, Luke Akenhurst and Alix Mortimer.

The elections see 4000 seats up for grabs at 159 councils nationally, along with the London Mayoralty and the London Assembly.

“It’s become increasingly clear that the web has something extra to offer on election night. An elaborate network of opinion formers, activists and analysts collide online producing fact, rumour, and mood not found anywhere else.” Craig Oliver, editor of BBC News at Six and BBC News at Ten, wrote on the BBC Editors Blog.

“While guarded politicians offer the official line on radio and TV, the web provides the unvarnished truth about what the parties are really thinking.”

Harnessing new web technology for election coverage is not exclusively the domain of national big guns. The Liverpool Daily Post and Liverpool Echo will have reporters at each of the 10 vote counts in the area, who will feed to a live blog accessible on both sites.

There will be newspaper staff at three of the counts - Liverpool, Wiral and Knowsley - using mobile phone technology to stream live reports and a TV unit will produce a video package of events. The final video version is expected to go live by 7am in time for the morning rush.

“Harnessing the new technology on the Post and Echo sites will enable us to bring the most comprehensive coverage of local elections to readers who now demand nothing less,” said Alastair Machray, editor of the Liverpool Echo, in a press statement.

The titles attempted online election coverage last year, which was viewed by over 4,000 people. The sites have since been relaunched and with improved technology the two expect the coverage to be a hit with voters.

Similar posts:

• BBC London uses YouTube for mayoral questions
• Looking at the Liverpool papers live blog coverage of the Rhys Jones murder trial
• Sky News uses CoveritLive for Crewe by-election debate
• Liverpool Echo relaunches print edition
• AP to stream live video on US election night for first time

‘Blog off’ says Janet Street-Porter

I’m not the first to pick up on this (thanks to Iain Dale’s diary for flagging it up) but wanted to share:

In her latest offering for the Independent on Sunday, Janet Street-Porter says her motto for 2008 will be: ‘blog off’.

In it Street-Porter argues that, while blogs from war zones and places of censorship might have news value, “99 per cent of blogs just soak up your valuable time without giving anything meaningful back”.

Unfortunately for Janet, what should appear at the bottom of her piece online, but…

To have your say on this or any other issue visit www.independent.co.uk/IoSblogs

Similar posts:

• Sunday Business Post: INM to cut London staff by 40 per cent
• More liveblogging from Liverpool Daily Post as Queen visits city
• NYTimes.com mobile site records 600% traffic growth in 2007
• Blogs make money and live long lives: Technorati’s 2008 report
• Crain’s signs up more than 4,000 to daily news alert

Round-up: Open house event at The Telegraph on political blogging

Debates about blogging, political or otherwise, could go on forever. Credit must go to the Telegraph team for getting this one going - it was just starting to get a bit more interesting before time ran out though.

Still, some interesting issues raised, if not too many conclusions.

• Firstly, and this is something raised on this blog before, are journalists who write blogs the same as bloggers?

Iain Dale noted that Mail On Sunday bloggers have to submit their posts to the lawyers first. This was a common experience with one member of the audience, a blogging journalist at Telegraph.co.uk, who said the profit interests of the group’s owner would always impact upon the blogging process in this way.

Lloyd Shepherd pointed out that while legal costs are the only costs not to have gone down in the new digital age, the law is becoming more sensitive to cases where content might not have actually been seen by that many people.

• Iain Dale downplayed the notion of a blogging elite. Yet how come everyone in the room (bar me…) were on first name terms and often didn’t have to introduce their blog first?

Mick Fealty, writer on Northern Irish political blog Slugger O’Toole and the Telegraph’s blog Brassneck, explained that ‘top blog’ lists are not intended to reinforce an elite, but ‘about trying to get people to break out of their daily online habits and go and look at something completely different’.

• There’s a lot of cross-over between ‘traditional’ journalism and blogs (maybe this was because there were a lot of journalists in the room…): in-depth investigative coverage, face-to-face networking and contact making.

Major differences between the two discussed last night were the ability of blogs to talk to people and not at people, and their capacity to democratise. (Not a strong enouch distinction was made for me.)

One Telegraph blogging journalist pointed out that the BNP website receives more hits than all the other political parties’ sites combined - yet when blogging about this he didn’t link to the BNP’s site.

So can blogging democratise political coverage by the media, while the media adheres to an establishment view of politics as a three party system?

Lots of summaries of last night’s event have already been posted - here are a few to get you going (am I perpetuating a blogging elite by just linking to these few?):

• Shane Richmond (from the organiser’s mouth)
• Lloyd Shepherd (from Messy Media and a speaker at the event)
• Simon Dickson of Puffbox

Similar posts:

• Political blogger Iain Dale launches TotalPolitics.com
• New Telegraph political blog on the way
• New political blog for Telegraph
• Shiny in top 100 UK blogs
• My first Twitter

Shiny in top 100 UK blogs

Shiny Media’s shinyshiny.tv - a blog about gadgets aimed at women - has been ranked as the UK’s 12th most popular blog.

Compiled by beta internet marketing service Blogstorm, plenty of political blogs break into the top 100 with Iain Dale at 32 and Northern Ireland’s Slugger O’Toole,whose creator Mike Fealty now runs Telegraph.co.uk’s Brassneck blog, at 59.

According to Blogstorm the rankings are created by listing over 1400 UK blogs and calculating their populatiry using metrics of Alexa Ranking and Technorati Ranking for each site.

For a full rundown of the top 100 UK blogs click here.

Similar posts:

• Round-up: Open house event at The Telegraph on political blogging
• New political blog for Telegraph
• Blog08: Pete Cashmore - Blogging is dead, microblogging is the future
• Journalism.co.uk creates maps for freelance journalists
• NMK: Telegraph uses Dipity in aggregation first

New media rank amongst London’s ‘most influential’

Tomorrow the Evening Standard will release its list of the 1,000 most influential people in London - complete with a brand new section devoted to media.

Roy Greenslade has had a sneak preview of the media movers and shakers, and writes that plenty of new media names make the list.

Political blogger Iain Dale, Annelies van den Belt, managing director of ITV Broadband and former Telegraph Media Group director of new media, and Simon Waldman, digital director at The Guardian, all make the 50-strong media list.

Nikesh Arora, Google’s European vice president, founder of the Carphone Warehouse Charles Dunstone and Mark Zuckerberg (not strictly a Londoner, but hey…) , founder of Facebook, make it into the top five.

Similar posts:

• New media types among Evening Standard’s 1000 most influential Londoners
• Nielsen Online makes host of UK and EMEA appointments
• AOP 2008: At yesterday’s digital sweetshop - best of the rest
• Adrian Jeakings will replace John Fry at Archant
• Brand Republic: Mirror to merge print and online ad sales teams