The winners in the 2005 Weblog Awards have been announced. Winners include
| Best Blog | The Daily Kos |
| Best Group Blog | Hit and Run |
| Best Liberal Blog | AmericaBlog |
| Best Conservative Blog | Ace of Spades HQ |
| Best Media/Journalist Blog | Michael Yon |
The complete list of results is at the link above.
I want to thank each and every person who voted for The Glittering Eye for each and every vote. I’m sincerely grateful for your appreciation.
Thanks to Kevin Aylward and his associates for the enormous amount of hard and, I suspect, largely thankless work that was involved in pulling off the awards. It’s pretty fashionable to pooh-pooh the Weblog Awards. I don’t share the cynicism. I think that they serve several functions. They’re yet another way for blogs to get more attention. There were lots of great blogs in the lower EcoSystem classes that I’d never heard of and the Awards provided a showcase in which they might get at least a tiny spotlight.
And the Awards also have the potential to strengthen the community ties in the entire blogosphere which, I’m afraid, is showing ever greater signs of faction.
I have a number of suggestions for next year’s Awards including some new categories and special awards most of which I’ll email directly to Kevin. But I’ll share a few here as well.
I think there should be a Best Limited-Run Series entry. There have been some great multi-part posts that deserve recognition. I also think that there should be a Best Post competition for which only the nominees’ authors may submit nominations. A method should be found to limit the voting to those who have actually read all of the posts that were nominated (I have ideas for this). I think a Hall of Fame should be added for blogs that are now inactive. And I think that there should be an In Memoriam section for bloggers who have died over the previous year. I think it would be unseemly for this last to be voted on in public election.
If you have any ideas for additional awards or changes in the governance of the Awards, submit them in the comments section and I’ll forward them on.
UPDATE: Kevin Aylward, the originator and head honcho of the awards, has posted his comments on this year’s Awards.
And the Awards also have the potential to strengthen the community ties in the entire blogosphere which, I’m afraid, is showing ever greater signs of faction.
C’mon, you can’t be serious. The Kos Kidz voted for any blog that regurgitated their dreck. I didn’t care about losing, but Jesus General isn’t even witty, it’s just winking at the Kos Krowd. I don’t want to strengthen ties with Americablog, Atrios, etc either. Besides, while the conservative / libertarian blogosphere’s great achievement has been submarining the Dem Party organs in the MSM, the Lefty blogs’ great accomplishment has been pushing the Dems towards the whack-job Left. Even better ;p
That’s just what I mean by “faction”, Jeff. This year it was pretty clear that faction was more important to a lot of the voters than quality. The notion that The Daily Kos is, indeed, the best blog is absurd. It’s just the most popular left of center blog and that’s what the voting reflected.
I don’t believe that Michelle Malkin is the best blog, either—just a very popular right-leaning blog and, consequently, she garnered the most votes from right-leaning partisans.
I guess I’m naive. I keep hoping that if we listen better and shout less that consensus can be reached on more topics and that the means that come to hand, of which the Awards are one, shoud be used.
But where we are right now is the difference between potential and actuality.
Malkin is a muck-raker who exposes stuff that gets passed over in the MSM. But I’ve always said it’s indicative that the most popular lefty blog is Kos, while the most popular right blog is Reynolds, who’s really a moderate & pragmatist. But any of these awards deals are popularity contests. I did have fun trolling the comments of Jesus General, whose hipsters manque are actually quite easily offended if you make fun of say, Cindy Sheehan, or the Tookster (“Can’t we get Mumia while the nurse is still there?”)
I don’t think that Glenn is right-leaning at all. I think he’s a pro-Iraq war libertarian (which is a competely different axis of political thought than right-left). Libertarians are allied right now with political and social conservatives (“the Right”) because “the Left” includes enough Stalinists that there’s obviously no home for them there. That’s one of the reasons libertarians are so grumpy these days: today’s Republican Party isn’t too congenial for them but today’s Democratic Party is a lot worse.
I don’t have anything against Michelle, by the way and certainly don’t detest her the way some left-leaning bloggers obviously do. But her site is a little too red meat to be entirely to my taste.
Once there existed a rational left political stance. As hard as that is to believe, it is true. What went wrong? The left conquered academia and ruled it with an iron fist. Many pogroms occurred and all centrists and rightists were banished. All that remained were the leftest of the leftists. Yes, they still had arguments, but there was essentially just one point of view. The argument was about who expressed that one point of view in the best style, or with the most emotive force. Forced inbreeding. Very sad indeed.
The denizens of Kos are all insane. If they also drive democrat party bosses to the fringe left, even better.