Afternoon:
10°c
“All bloggers are gay”. This magisterial judgment, proffered to me by a fellow Westminster journalist not very long ago, summed up the way the mainstream media used to view the upstart “blogosphere”.
But the new Total Politics 2009 Guide to UK Blogging, published this month, reveals that there are now close to 2,000 political blogs alone, with more started every week.
Either there's been a sudden surge in the UK's homosexual population (“not that there's anything wrong with that,” as Jerry Seinfeld put it) — or writing a “weblog” is becoming as natural as using a mobile phone.
The fact is that, after years of being derided, what began as a labour of love dominated by pyjama-wearing geeks has entered the mainstream. It's easy to see why blogs have become more popular. They are global, instantaneous, uncensored and interactive. In the US, counting the number of blogs is becoming as pointless as counting the number of websites or cracks in the pavement. The last best guess, in 2007, was 112 million blogs worldwide.
A blog can now break the news of Michael Jackson's death (TMZ), start a literary career (Belle de Jour), organise demos (PlaneStupid), even influence elections (Huffington Post).
Like any ecosystem, the actual inhabitants of this brave new world are incredibly varied. There are “mommy blogs”, celebrity blogs, Plod (police) blogs. But for some reason — maybe it's the chance to be the anorak's anorak or simply the unlimited space for comment — it is politics that seems to whet the British appetite for the genre.
Politicians know that they ignore blogs at their peril. Number 10 and Conservative HQ are sometimes on the phone within seconds of my putting a post online.
They may be chuckling at criticism of their opponents or ringing to have a moan. Either way they can get a rapid rebuttal up in the time it takes to Tweet an insult. An anonymous email carrying a juicy political video is the modern-day equivalent of a brown paper envelope left outside the Commons tea room.
There are pitfalls for those MPs who choose to blog. Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley got into hot water this year for musing idly that “the recession can be good for us”. He was pointing out that people smoked and drank less and spent more time with their families — but that didn't stop the Prime Minister ridiculing his online gaffe. The offending post was swiftly erased and Lansley hasn't been near a computer since.
David Miliband's official ministerial blog is so dull it makes the Welsh Assembly channel look gripping. Conversely, the blog written by Labour MP Tom Harris was deemed a bit too interesting and is credited for getting him the sack as a minister.
Whereas in the US, the Left helped get Obama elected, here in the UK the Right has made the running. While sites from ConservativeHome.com, Iain Dale, who really is a blogger who happens to be gay, and Guido Fawkes prosper, Left-of-centre blogs are only slowly coming to the party (though John Prescott and Alastair Campbell have recently arrived carrying their very own six‑pack of Watneys).
It's simple and cheap to start a new blog and many that began a few months ago now attract serious traffic. Be warned — it can be addictive. My wife now bans me from blogging and Tweeting on our holidays. The laptop was, as they used to say in Ulster, put “beyond use” for the fortnight. Thank goodness we're back and the keyboard beckons for the party conference season.
Read Paul's blog at http://waugh.standard.co.uk.
