Blogging and Welsh Politics

Use of the Internet by Welsh politicians is still in its infancy. However, this is going to change radically as a new generation of politician enters the political arena/bullring. Politicians have been forced to become more web-aware but only because political bloggers goad and pick at them for the entertainment of increasingly savvy Internet users who now get their news and comment online.

The internet has been moving to the mainstream of political life in the US for some years.But in this presidential cycle it has been particularly important for the Obama campaign, which was starting from scratch with few resources and little name recognition.
The internet favours the outsider, and gives them the ability to quickly mobilise supporters and money online.

Political bloggers themselves are also learning the ropes and we will see much more sophisticated blog sites as they evolve and migrate from the ‘freebies’ like the excellent ‘Blogger‘ to sites with more functionality, tools and inevitably monetisation through advertising. Examples of these are the rabid Guido Fawkes and ’smooth Tory’ Iain Dales’s Diary.

Of course, the newspapers (or ‘Dead Trees Press’) have migrated en masse onto the Internet with varying degree of success. The Guardian, Times and Telegraph (and other papers) have spent millions on their web sites whose busiest elements (in traffic terms) are the blogs of their celebrity columnists. However, this doesn’t disguise the fact that most online people only get their news fixes from The BBC website and their comment from independent bloggers. It is indicative that the ‘blogrolls’ of most bloggers (including this one) rarely include links to the ‘dead tree press’. The reason for this is their increasing irrelevance.

The main argument, best defense and way forward for the ‘dead trees press’ is always going to be Quality. The blogosphere is filled with rubbish. We all know it. Nevertheless, the interactivity and search tools of the Internet make it very easy to locate and ‘bookmark’ sites that provide quality news, comment, political aggravation and entertainment and these will be the ones that generate traffic. If newspaper websites cannot find ‘quality’ commentators that can blog or stimulate an online following then there will be no compelling reason to visit. The Western Mail is an example of this. Readership of the print version is only maintained by WAG advertising of jobs and tenders and by their rugby coverage. Nobody goes to it for online news which they can get more easily (and without ads) from the BBC.

So I predict that political bloggers will become ‘web stars’ and virtual soldiers in the upcoming political battles. The Americans have shown us how to do it. Some will remain independent, some will become affiliated to a newspaper/magazine and some will be vehicles for political lobbying (by the political parties or commercial interest). In fact, war has already been declared and there are casualties everywhere (Peter Hain, Gordon Brown, Tamsin Dunwoody).

Cambria Politico is affiliated to and reflects the ethos, editorial stance and opinions of Cambria magazine. We make no claims to being unbiased, impartial or independent. This is, after all, a blog! We like who we like and we campaign on and support issues that we feel are important to Wales and our readers. We try, (as always) to uphold the best journalistic traditions of truth, accuracy, proper citation and good writing.