The Comment Awards 2014: Vote Solid

Since Twitter killed the comments box star, a lot of fine blogging traditions have been forgotten. Memes like this one used to circulate around blogs, driving traffic through tagging and plentiful linky-love. There used to be lovely blog carnivals showcasing writing from your compadres and comrades. These were excellent for community-building and discovering smart bloggers you may otherwise have missed. And yes, one much-hyped tradition was the annual battle of the blogs. Each year, roughly coinciding with the onset of the silly season Iain Dale/Total Politics would run their top 100 political blogs poll. Bloggers of all political stripes and none would solicit votes and, in one or two cases, manipulate them so they get a decent position. Under the old name, this place did okay - it would have even been a top ten Labour blog in 2010 had the minion in charge bothered to recognise me in that category. I'm not bitter.

It was a bit of fun. Yet the annual poll was more than that too. Remember, this was before established media outlets starting gobbling up (primarily London-based) bloggers for their comment platforms. So it was a chance to get noticed, to stand out from the crowd, to get some kudos and a possibility the press equivalent of A&R offering a trial run in a "proper" newspaper. It was a big(ish) deal, and has been put out to pasture since 2011. 

Thankfully, some blog awards are deader than others. Passing me by last year, Editorial Intelligence sponsor their own awards "for the industry to commend and support the best of UK comment journalism." Great stuff. And look at the categories, there's one for that oft-overlooked beastie: the independent blogger.

So I'm going to ask you, the reader, for a big favour. I want you to nominate me or, rather, this blog. I've self-nominated under the independent category. But it's fair to say I'd tick the politics, cultural, and media boxes too. What you need to do is hit up the nominations page, follow the instructions and submit your three favourite pieces by me from the last year. And that's it. Sure, a panel of judges are the real gatekeepers here but the more nominations a blog gets the more seriously they'll look at it.

Cheers for that. Now, for the footy.