Is this really the death of political blogging?

Iain Dale, who is coming out of his ‘retirement’ from political blogging, decrees mainstream media has ‘eaten up the blogosphere’ – but leftwing bloggers claim rightwingers like him have just run out of puff • Iain Dale: My plan to revive UK political blogging He was among the most influential of political bloggers, who shocked the online community late last year by giving up posting. But next month Iain Dale makes a return to the internet at the helm of a new online magazine with a group of 60 “retired bloggers” and writers. Those already signed up for the Daley include Shelagh Fogarty, BBC 5 Live’s recently departed breakfast presenter, Tom Harris MP , and television personality Christine Hamilton – as Dale argues that the influence of individual political bloggers is waning. Dale said he wanted to set up the new venture because although he could no longer sustain an individual political blog as “I couldn’t write three or four times a day” while his other media interests expanded, and because he doubted their relevance. He added he had “come to the conclusion that the mainstream media had eaten up the blogosphere”. Nevertheless, Dale said he “still wanted an outlet” to write occasionally, and had taken to recruiting “sixty friends”, many of whom had given up on individual blogging. He said that “he was not even sure” that The Daley was a blog or even a group blog, but rather “an online magazine; it will be designed to look like a newspaper or periodical”. Dale’s “death of the political blog” thesis comes at a time when the US Huffington Post is preparing to move into the UK and when the first wave of high-profile political bloggers – a grouping dominated by conservatives – are no longer so active as individual writers. Tim Montgomerie, who set up and runs Conservative Home , wants to move on to “another phase in my career”, while Paul Staines, who set up the scabrous Guido Fawkes site leaves much of the day-to-day writing to his deputy, Harry Cole. Staines also told the Guardian that he also believed that “he thought some of the energy has gone out of blogging; it isn’t the new thing any more”. However, both of those have created small businesses, while Dale has focused on building up his personal own media interests. Montgomerie’s upmarket Conservative Home employs four and turns over “about £300,000″ selling “consultancy based on our knowledge of the Conservative party” and enjoys the backing of Lord Ashcroft. Meanwhile, Staines runs a blog advertising network and acts as a “mini Max Clifford”, selling some news to tabloid newspapers. For him the secret is turning a blog into a business, and although advertising rates have fallen by three quarters he says he can sell adverts at a still remunerative cost of £5 per thousand viewers. “There are a lot of bloggers like Dizzy Thinks bowing out, but we’ve made it sustainable – and we’re having as much fun as ever.” All continue to report healthy traffic – with Conservative Home running at 20,000 visitors a day and Guido’s Order Order site 50,000 visitors – and still can help set the news agenda as Guido Fawkes did last year when his reports about William Hague’s friendship with his male then assistant prompted the foreign secretary to deny they had a relationship. Leftwing and centrist pundits counter that the Dale’s death of political blogging argument is greatly exaggerated. Sunny Hundal, who runs the Liberal Conspiracy site, which claims to be the first to have revealed the details of the coalition agreement last May, said that “rightwing bloggers are suffering from fatigue” and have lost momentum because they “were in campaigning mode against the Labour government”. Traffic at the site runs at 100,000 visitors a month – it highest non-election level. Will Straw, who founded the self-styled “evidence-based” Left Foot Forward site and whose father is the former foreign secretary Jack Straw, did leave to join left of centre thinktank the IPPR at the end of last year. But Straw is emphatic that his decision does not endorse Dale’s thesis: “I went into my career to be more of an ideas person than a journalist” and said that his goal was to create “a research focused rebuttal blog for the left”. He points out that he has left behind an operation with two staff and an intern and about £70,000 a year in income from a mixture of donors. Left Foot Forward claims to be the first blog to have predicted Ed Miliband would win the Labour leadership election – and that Ed Balls would come third. Paul Waugh, who left a job at the Evening Standard to run the Ashcroft backed Politics Home site last year, admits that “a lot of people have got tired of blogging” because it is “hard to get going if you are not getting paid”. Money for all bloggers remains a major problem, and traffic levels in the tens of thousands make it very difficult to generate as much as a £1,000 a month without a very targeted advertising strategy. Waugh’s daily email, though, is read by David Cameron among others, and he says that his online focus means he can break stories by reacting faster than others to the Twitterstream – being the first for example to spot that Peter Hain was one of the first to tweet in complaint about the lack of camera coverage of Ed Miliband at the royal wedding. Nevertheless there is no shortage of emerging bloggers such as Sue Marsh, a disability campaigner, or Ed Jacobs who blogs about politics in the UK’s nations on Left Foot Forward, while many established political thinkers, such as Matthew Taylor, the number 10 aide who now is the chief executive of the Royal Society of the Arts, consider blogging as part of their day jobs. Waugh added that his Politics Home site links to “716 other political blogs” – suggesting that for all the teething pains and generational shifts political blogging remains in vigorous health. The emergence of The Daley also indicates that this is an activity that is growing up; as newspapers look more like blog sites – blogs are trying to look more like newspapers. Blogging Newspapers & magazines Digital media Dan Sabbagh guardian.co.uk

Posted by on May 13, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.