So What Do YOU Think Makes a Good Political Blog?
We’re getting a little project underway here in the BunkWorks – still in the early design stages, but it should prove very interesting if we can enlist the right support.
Here’s a question to get the ball rolling, directed to anyone who’s interested in blogs and blogging. What do you personally think makes a good political blog? What is it that attracts you to the political blogs you like the most?
No need to provide examples, and we’re not trying to set off a snarkfest. This is a genuine question, and we’re genuinely interested in your responses. And we’re particularly interested in responses from readers and bloggers representing the widest possible range of political perspectives.
More about our Little Project later, we promise. But for now, the question: What makes a good political blog?
Okay, I’ll bite.
There are lots of things, but the most basic one is: comments. If I can’t comment, it’s not a blog, to me. It’s just an editorial page. Especially on a “political site”.
What’s the project?
Whooee! Well, I agree about comments but there’s more than just allowin’ ‘em. The comments gotta attract and engage readers with differing views. And them reader-commenters gotta be haffway literate an’ articulate. The commenters gotta keep away from ad hominies an’ rah-rah cheerleader stuff. The author of the OP has gotta chime in every once in a while outta respect fer his readership and to defend his thesis.
I reckon the subject of the OP needs to be provocative enough to invite a good commentin’ gabfest.
It’s all about the conversation. That’s what makes it bloggy, sez I. Attractin’ and nurturin’ sensible, interestin’ conversation is a big part of it.
Boogers like Warren Kinsellerfeller and Paul Wells and Rick Mercer who don’t allow comments and don’t foster conversation are boogers who don’t get it. They see boogs as simply another venue fer publicatin’ their pontifications. Without allowin’ reader comments, they’re sayin’ the readers ain’t worthy of writin’ on their precious boogs.
I don’t comment on every boog I read. Far from it. But even so, if a booger don’t allow comments, that ain’t a boog I read too often.
A little bit o’ funny stuff don’t hurt, neither. I reckon its a good thing when regular reader-commenters feel like they are personally acquainted with the boog writer.
JB
A good blog has a special insight which people can appreciate. Verbatim news clippings and quotes generally doesn’t cut it. As well, varying opinion and analysis is interesting, aside from always cutting up one particular enemy. As informed as some progressive bloggers are, they get caught up in the same blinding rage to specific dead horses they beat on.
To expand on Raphael’s first point: I agree that a “good” blog is actually written, as opposed to assembled.
To this interesting and growing list I’m going to add something basic: the blogger should be able to write. I don’t just mean mastery of grammar and syntax; I like a writer with a recognizable voice and style. There are a lot of bloggers (and writers in other media) I disagree with vehemently on almost everything, but I still read and enjoy because they’re good writers.
Do your research. By research, I don’t mean unattributed copy and paste from some other source.
Avoid strawman arguments. A strawman is any claim as to what your opponent’s position is, if not given in the words your opponent actually uses. You can still criticize your opponents position, but the appropriate way to do so is to start with what your opponent has actually said (in the words they actually used,) then back up any claim you make with hard evidence.
One, could, of course, say quite a bit about critical thinking, but when it comes to political blogs, the two points above (particularly the second,) are my main pet peeves.
Activity. I know good blogging takes time and maybe its asking too much, but I prefer sites that are regularly updated, hopefully daily.
What makes a good political blog?
I’ll let you know when one comes along.
Adding to the list–except for the moans about comments which I’ve never found particularly germane to a blog–I’d say that the majority of the topics chosen should be meaningful. There are plenty of bloggers who routinely hit the other criteria, but when they rarely if ever rise above topics such as Edward’s haircut it makes their blogs worthless.
Agreed about comments, but writing style is probably as important to me. Thinking about who I visit most regularly, I obviously like a slightly sardonic, humorous voice.
I read all kinds of blogs, left, right and centre.
Here are some defining characteristics:
* Good writing. And yes, Big Blue Wave does need an editor. I admit it.
* Concise. Give me a pithy comment. Less that a couple of hundred words.
* Tell me something I didn’t know. Blogs that present little-known facts are a rarity. When they deal with “your issues” (whatever they happen to be), they’re precious.
* Insightful commentary. This is not something you can fake: either you have an eye for seeing what others don’t see, or you don’t.
* Put some effort into the design. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it should look maintained and updated every now and then.
* Don’t drink the Kool-Aid. I appreciate a team player. But keep your eyes open to the possibility that your party may be wrong.
* Be confident. Write what you think.
* Treat your commenters like human beings. I really hate blogs where the conversation degenerates into flamefests. I know some people like those. I don’t. I think it takes away from the seriousness of the blog.
One that presents the issues from the viewpoint of a citizen, not of the politician. There are many things that make sense for politicians and party strategists that have no real meaning for the rest of us.
I find political blogs that focus too much on polling or the politician’s communication strategy or the optics of an issue to be a distraction. Like watching a game of hockey as opposed to being invited to play hockey.
All good points.
I would add well reasoned and well argued in all senses, not just Mark’s point about straw men. Even for controversial topics, a well reasoned, well argued point, even if it is factually wrong, can generate a lot of good discussion. those kinds of things rarely happen.
To that end I think a good political blog should not be afraid to advocate or argue things that are not necessarily popular amongst their natural peer group.
As for comment, I think a good blog should be able to separate the wheat from the chaffe in comment to keep the quality high, without resorting to outright censorship. Moderation. Ratings systems (like over at Slashdot), could help this. As far as I know, a part from moderation, I don’t know of an online comment system for Blogger or Wordpress (the site not the software) that allows this. The ability to have IP addresses captured to weed out sockpuppets and trolls would be nice…
Beyond that, just interesting content, be it serious, silly, snarky or all of the above.
The ability to have IP addresses captured to weed out sockpuppets and trolls would be nice…
HaloScan provides that capability and it is embeddable in Blogger.
I installed Haloscan today but quickly uninstalled it. A few problems I had were that my old comments were all gone, and not accessible. Can I import them into Haloscan? Also, my recent comments widget didn’t link to the Haloscan comments. Anyone proficient enough in Haloscan to point me to a good FAQ on those issues?
dynamics. Without it you’re mediocre.
Allow as much and more as you can tolerate and deal with the fallout.
Who wants to return to a blogg that is static?
Just go read The Galloping Beaver. That’s what a good political blog should be like. Intelligent comment by someone who knows what they are talking about.
I’ll get to the point at hand, but just as an aside to answer Raphael’s questions… 1) You will unfortunately have to wave bye-bye to all of your old comments made under blogger. If that’s a sticking issue for you, then Haloscan isn’t for you. However, ask yourself whether they’re really all that precious and need to be saved for time immemorial… After a while, you may not think so. Besides, the longer you wait, the more of an impediment this becomes.
As for the “recent comments” feature, they do have a widget that will do this exactly the same way you presently have on your blog.
a really good blog should have a blogroll that reaches from here to my house….
KEvron
Uh yeah….
Problem with the Galloping Beaver is the tendency for rightwing derangement syndrome. Sometimes their members have the opportunity to offer insightful, balanced, researched criticism based on a variety of factual accuracies and irrefutable proofs.
But most of the time it’s ruined by their inflammatory rhetoric and tendency to get bogged down in the infantile lament of Bush and Harper. I much rather prefer a writer who can legitimately crush a political opponent using facts and reason.
Often I find skdadl to be a member of that crowd, but today he/she wrote an articulate and factually pertinent article at POGGE. I thought it was an excellent piece of information about the war in Afghanistan, the criticisms for why he/she doesn’t believe the war will work, and there was no infantile sloganisms and “BUSH kill UR babies” nonsense.
Well done, skdadl.
Red, thanks for the information. I’ll certainly take it under advisement.
“You will unfortunately have to wave bye-bye to all of your old comments made under blogger.”
i noodled around with the template when i added haloscan, and managed to keep all of the old comments intact. can’t remember how i did it, though. stoopid weed….
KEvron
What makes a good political blog? Well, a lot of things and they’re all relative to some degree or another.
The ability to comment can be a factor, but isn’t always so. It seems a little haughty of some bloggers such as Kinsella not to allow them, but it also makes visiting their site a breeze, especially given the posting style is usually quite offhand. So there’s an upside to not allowing comments. Coyne allows them, but people don’t take advantage of that forum much. I almost never comment at many of the sites I visit, or even bother to read the comments for that matter. Examples would include Crooks & Liars, Atrios, Sadly No! etc. Others I just can’t help but comment at (there’s also a “clubby” kind of dynamic involved).
Fresh material is nice, but it depends. If the writer tends to produce lengthy pieces and you know roughly what their scheduled output is, then you just tailor your visits accordingly (or add them to your RSS reader so you know when they’re updated). Jon Swift for example isn’t all that prolific, but well worth the visit whenever he posts. On the other hand, a site like Crooks & Liars usually gets hit several times a day, especially on a good news day because breaking stuff appears quickly with video.
Original opinions and a unique perspective are a definite must. If I want to get talking points from party central (whatever the party), then I know where to go and don’t need them regurgitated by some boring jackass with a blog. This includes the legion of “Me too” blogs that contribute to the vast echo chambers that make up a lot of political discourse on the web. The “cut-n-pasters” are the most insufferable and completely useless species of this breed. My preference is for blogs that actually make opinions, rather than simply echo them, or at least ones that provide novel insight. Examples would be Kevin Drum (Washington Monthly), Andrew Sullivan, Matt Yglesias, James Kunstler, Glen Greenwald, Bob Somerby, David Neiwert, et. al.
Quality writing is a must. I can’t think of one badly written blog that I’d ever bother visiting other than to make fun of it. Sometimes the quality of writing is an absolute joy and the opinions expressed, though not irrelevant by any means, are almost a secondary consideration to reveling in the artistry of a first-class wordsmith (sorry, I couldn’t think of a better term) and/or humorist. Examples would James Wolcott, Stephen Fry, Jon Swift, et. al.
Which brings me to my final (although I’ve probably left out some qualities) criterion, which is humour. My favourite political blogs make me laugh, or at least smirk benignly. I suppose blogs that are deadly serious or in a state of perpetual outrage serve a purpose, but if you can’t laugh at the farcical side of politics and the absurd foibles of power and authority, then you’re likely to be hopelessly depressing and/or insufferably dull — and where’s the fun in that?
Oh, one other thing (see, I knew I’d forget something) and that is “man does not live by bread alone.” By that, I simply mean that all politics all the time can get a bit tedious. So, tangents that run off into the world of culture, music, art, theatre and so on provide nice relief from the daily grind of primary horseraces, question period shenanigans, electioneering, etc. There usually ends up being a “political” angle to these things in any case, but it indicates a broader scope than is the case with a lot of the “Johnny (or Joanne) one notes” out there.
Oh, well if that’s the case then, I stand corrected. I was sure that’s what the instructions had said. Mind you, I really haven’t spend any time at all tinkering with it and it was an academic consideration on my present blog, but I’m planning on having a look at the options tomorrow in response to a request, so I’ll see what I can find on that.
I’m going to summarize the key points listed above; please add, expand, or clarify.
What makes a good political blog?
- Insightful posts, backed by research and analysis;
- Original opinions and a unique perspective, facts and insights, and not just repetition of party lines or old argument;
- Good writing, and a recognizable voice and style;
- Emphasis on intelligent argument – facts, reason, accurate research;
- Dynamic commentary by a range of readers with different views (with some dissenting on the necessity of comments);
- A literate and articulate readership;
- Avoidance of the common rhetorical fallacies; ad hominem arguments, straw men, and simple partisan cheerleading;
- Participation by the original writer to stimulate and focus discussion, and to defend the original thesis;
-Meaningful topics provocative enought to stimulate a lively discussion;
- Humour;
- A sense of the person behind the blog;
- Frequent new content;
- Concise articles;
- An attractive, reader-friendly design, occasionally updated
- Writers and commenters who are actually exploring issues, not just making arguments, and possibly even willing to change their minds;
- A dynamic that discourages flamefests;
- A focus on the citizen’s perspective, not the politicians’;
- Occasional forays away from the strictly political into culture, music, art, theatre and so
Wonderful stuff, folks. Don’t stop, but I thought I would summarize what you’ve said so far. What else?
I’ll add a personal bugbear of mine. I have to TRUST the writer. If I discover they’ve lied, or knowingly omitted key facts to strengthen an argument, they’ve lost me.
This is a great question and there have been some great answers. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for the last week or so.
Looking through Balb’s summary I’m not sure that I can add any more attributes to the list. I’ll make a distinction though. I see many of the comments falling into two categories: (1) what makes a good blog and (2) what makes a good community.
A good blog can support a good community but it doesn’t have to: it can stand alone. A good community is almost always supported by good content but furthers it in the discussion.
For example, I read blogs by Wells, and Coyne and Sullivan and others because they have insightful things to say, they have an original voice, I trust them, they avoid being blindly partisan and offer reasoned and reasonable opinions. They don’t have great ( or sometimes any ) communities. I think they are great based on their content.
Great communities rely blog author(s) but they also rely on key members of the community.
The author(s) set the tone and encourage participation in two key ways: they set an example of a willingness to honestly consider alternate views and they participate directly in the discussion or at least make you feel like they are there or nearby and care what happens in the comments. If you do this long enough you will attract people who are willing to do the same.
To sustain a good community you need a handful of regular comment contributors who are like the author(s) and who help police the comments both by example and by discouraging bad behavior ( eg: flames )
I think there are a few attributes which create echo chambers which then attract trolls and flames. One is over-the-topness of content. If you take a position to an extreme then you will induce extreme reactions from ideological opposites. The other is attacking the argument and not attacking the person making the argument. This happens in obvious and more subtle ways. You can say “that person is an idiot …” or you can also say ( for example ) “Bush supporters are brownshirts”.
On the other hand, you don’t want milk-toast every day.
One thing that BBG did, and I consider BBG a late great community, was to pose questions in the posts and not just conclusions — much like you have done here and look at the excellent comments you’ve solicited. “Are Bush supporters really Brown Shirts?” sets off a different discussion than “Bush supporters are brownshirts”.
I would agree with your point about posing provocative questions if the aim is to elicit a lively discussion, especially about a contentious issue, however it should also be noted that this can be abused as an intellectually dishonest means of introducing reprehensible ideas while at the same time disavowing any responsibility for actually advocating the position clearly implicit in the question. There are many bloggers on the Right who employ this tactic to disguise their racism, homophobia and what not. If taken to task, they just shrug their shoulders and offer up some lame explanation like, “I’m just sayin’” or something to that effect.
p.s. Unrelated, but isn’t there some way to get your comments to “remember” people?
Very interesting distinction, Kevin, and one that may point to a real division of opinion. I see little in the other attributes that anyone would disagree with; but the comments/no comments question is a poser. Comment-less blogs are certainly “blogs”. But to me they reject the essence of this medium – its interactivity, with the concomitant capacity for iterative argument and instant peer-based fact-checking.
Red, I’ve passed your query on to the guys in the Engine Room.
I have to TRUST the writer. If I discover they’ve lied, or knowingly omitted key facts to strengthen an argument, they’ve lost me.
Excellent point. There are hundreds of people with whom I disagree with, sometimes profoundly, but nonetheless respect because I know they are presenting arguments in good faith. On that issue, correcting and updating posts and acknowledging commenters who’ve been helpful in that respect, goes a long way in establishing credibility.
Okay, I know you didn’t want examples, but I’ll give you one. My favourite political blog, alongside you, is Calgary Grit. It’s well written and conducted in a very respectful manner. And Dan Arnold manages to get that critical balance between expressing his own partisan desires, and acknowledging the political realities as others sees them. He’s able to assess when his opponents have made good strategic moves, and when his own party has made a blunder, and that lends him an immense amount of credibility when talking about politics. He knows how the game is played because he’s played it, and while he is nominally on one side, winning the game is not the most important aspect of his blog.
Similarly, Jason Cherniak is as good a writer as he is, and he is quite deep within the Liberal party apparatus to give us an interesting window on affairs. However, he is more partisan in his writing, such that I go to his site to see the Liberal point of view, whereas I go to Grit’s site to get a broader analysis.
Red Tory pretty much sums up a lot of what I was going to say.
Here’s more:
I don’t think a good political blog is a partisan blog that’s all about attacking the media coverage (or other bloggers’) of the party that the blogger(s) supports. While media criticism is essential, it should be more than gotcha gotcha journalism.
That said, Canadian media today are so concentrated and so reticent to criticize the party in power (whatever that party may be) for reasons that have to to with broadcast regulation that NONE should be trusted. That means those people obsessed with attacking CBC -TV — ostensibly because a portion of its funding comes from the treasury — are about ideology, not media criticism. If there were halfway serious, they would recognize that Rogers, Shaw, CanWest and CTVglobemedia benefit enormously from the Canadian Television Fund, which is paid for by Heritage and an essentially illegal tax on Canadian cable subscribers.
Blogger wars are stupid. In the real world, nobody gives a shit if SDA’s winged monkeys hate WK’s fans. Get out of the schoolyard, boys and (some) girls.
As for comments …
When comments descend to trolling and attacking other commenters, then it’s time to close them. They are just a waste of time and bandwidth.
Balb-
I don’t disagree with the value of comments. I think how you approach being great depends to some extent on what being great means to the authors and the visitors.
Some ( not me nor most of the people who visit here ) might consider the style of lgf as great or the style of SDA as great ( style meaning uncritical self-affirming monocultures ). The tactics of being successful with that goal are different than the tactics of the goals generally described in the comments above.
It’s a little off topic but I think communities only scale up to a certain size too.
Speaking of monocultures, check out today’s topic:
We don’t hate Muslims, we hate Islam.
“I was sure that’s what the instructions had said. “
if i recall correctly, they instruct you to replace a portion of the comments script of your template. i believe i simply included their scrpit with the original, then put blogger’s comments option into moderation, thus allowing the earlier comments to remain (viewable via post links/time stamps).
something like that. it’s all a blur, and i’m too lazy to go into my template and suss it out.
KEvron
Real Discussion – not an echo chamber. It’s what I loved when my blog was flourishing for the day or two that it did. It is tough to achieve. I think we get there a few threads a year on SL which is no criticism of my good friends here. It’s difficult to keep out the trolls and the morons but every so often a discussion of incredible depth ensues. That’s what I wish all political blogs were about every day. If all political blogs were like that, we wouldn’t need Parliament. One of my earliest comments here, years ago, was about direct democracy and I still believe it is possible.
I would like to add another criterion:
Technical competence.
Technical competence just adds that extra something to a blog. When a blogger knows how to manipulate HTML to add a link within the text, instead of just quoting it, that adds to the conciseness of the blog. It adds a touch of credibility to the blogger.
Excellent input from everyone, many thanks. Continue if you have other thoughts: next phase coming within a week.
A lot of people who work in journalism crap all over blogs — and bloggers — as disruptive, their sites full of deliberate disinformation, hyperbole and invective instead of reasoned, rational discussion. They question the claims by some bloggers (and quite a few academics too) that they are part of a new and misunderstood aspect of public discourse, something they call “citizen” or “public” journalism.
These critics, mostly but not all in the traditional media, point to the lack of credibility of many bloggers, their lack of journalism training or adherence to basic principles of journalism, their snatch-and-grab of snippets from traditional media sites (aka real journalism) to offset their lack of original content, and their deliberate skewing of the information they present to push a particular agenda. I’ve heard it compared to a back alley full of cats in heat with a lot of hissing, spitting and loud noise but little else.
There’s more than a bit of hypocrisy in there. The MSM, some would say, is guilty of a lot of the same criticism. How much original reporting does any media outlet in any medium really do? Or do they snatch-and-grab a lot of pre-packaged PR fluff, wire service copy, and unattributed gossip (either political or entertainment) to fill its pages? Anyone who slams the Toronto Star or the National Post might understand.
Look at the number of MSM outlets that have setup personal and corporate blogs to tap into this wish by ordinary folks to have a say in whatever issue (even if they have nothing new or interesting to add). In some cases, such as the Globe and Mail’s comments sections after stories, some people have told me there’s little difference between the reader’s comments there and what they read (and are disgusted by) on a lot of private blogs. So even newspapers have trolls.
But few newspapers, the printed versions at least, have descended into platforms openly advocating racism, bigotry, misogyny, intolerance and other social evils in the name of generating readership or revenues. I wrote “few newspapers” — not all newspapers. I think — I hope — this is the big difference between so-called journalism and blogging.
I believe that the big difference, and disagree if you like, is that one is a social institution built over centuries in the hope that the exchange of rational, reasoned ideas in a public forum is good for political development. The other is not.
Not every letter to the editor should be published for all kinds of reasons, not least because the letter writer may be a paranoid idiot whose letter doesn’t make sense. There aren’t any rules or gatekeepers for bloggers – except for the bloggers themselves.
Some bloggers for instance, staunch defenders of their right to say even the most offensive crap anywhere they want without restriction, refuse to allow anyone else to comment on their own private sites. Others provide open platforms and try to engage readers and hopefully as many participants as possible with good writing and challenging ideas, with peer pressure as perhaps the only moderating factor. When applied to blogging, it’s the old adage that even pigs don’t shit where they eat.
So what makes a good political blog? I think that when the medium achieves some maturity it will be because those who present good ideas, expressed well, with civility and a measure of respect for the views of others, outshine and outdraw the crap that others profess as their right. It ain’t a right – it’s a privilege. I am not required, don’t need or want to read you if I find you don’t engage me or respect me.
Then again, there’s an amazing amount of crap that sells.
Good thread. I rarely comment anywhere because of the above.
If I had to add anything to the list of a political blog’s virtues (most of which I have no arguments), it’s the ability to showcase good links.
A post that’s well-informed is fine, but it’s helpful to provide links to sources, so that the blog reader can check them out and make his/her own judgements. It’s what distinguishes a good blogpost from a good essay, the inherent acknowledgement that the blogger isn’t operating in a vacuum.
The other thing I’d look for? Good comments. I wouldn’t necessarily want to read another blog whose commentary consists of flamefests and regurgitated press releases, regardless of the blogger’s belief in freedom of speech.