Irish Political News

Iain has come out with a list of 75 top political books with links through to Amazon. This is probably the most widely use way of earning pocket money on UK Political Blogs. Nearly everybody does it - including me.

The way the Amazon affiliate programme works is that if a person purchases anything from the Amazon website within 24 hours of a click through on an affiliate link, then the affiliate receives between 4% and 10% of the purchase value.

Over at Poliblog Perspective I’ve put up a demonstration of the process that I go through when editing an article. Using Sadie Smith’s new Westminster Watch report, I have posted “before” and “after” examples. I have done the pair of articles as a tutorial demonstration for new people joining the blog, it may be of wider interest. Guidelines There are only a few guidelines I give to people writing for the blog, and I try to keep editing as light as possible: Nothing actionable (i.e., dont get me sued). Write as if for an intelligent tabloid publication or at the level of the Economist. Unless there is a good reason not to do so, use regular Subheads such that they convey the sense and flow of your argument or article. A good test is to delete the text, and see if the headings and subheadnings still give the gist of the article. Tags: wardman wire editing process, subheads, headingsm style guide, editorial guidelines

I have increased the number of articles on the RSS Feed to 20 from the present 12. Why not subscribe if you don’t want to miss anything? For anoraks and techies, this is so that I can put a longer list of “Recent Postings” in the sidebar to make articles 2-3 days old easier to find; the “Recent Articles” widget takes the list from the RSS feed. Tags: rs feed, wardman wire, recent articles, recent postings

An enquiry arrived this morning: How do I get a screenshot for my blog? Is there a trick I need to know? Fortunately “all you need to know” is not actually very much. So, the 15 second version: 1 - Get yourself a copy of Irfanview - a free image editing utility from here. Install it. 2 - Display the web page of which you want to make a screenshot. Make sure that that is the active window. 3 - Press <ALT><Print Scrn>. This will copy the active window to the clipboard. 4 - Start Irfanview. 5 - Do <CTRL><V> (i.e., Paste from Clipboard) to paste the screenshot of the active window into the editor. 6 - Edit down to the part of the screenshot you need. 7 - Save image. Insert into webpage. Done. (If you just do <Print Scrn> at step 5 not <ALT><Print Scrn> you will get the whole screen.) Tags: screendump, how to make a screenshot for your webpage, screenshot for your blog

I’m currently doing a little work with a couple of the columnists who have been coming on stream with the Wardman Wire in the current period, and I have started to create our editorial guidelines. I’m therefore thinking about a number of questions around the nature of group blogs, and the process has raised some interesting questions. At what point does a group blog become a web magazine? Traditionally, blogs are distinguished by the architectural or technical features, such as “articles arranged in reverse date order”, “accept comments and trackbacks”, “syndicate content via RSS feeds”, or even “can be registered on Technorati“. I wonder if - in fact - we need to answer this question in editorial, managerial or subject matter terms: Is a group blog distinguished from a web magazine by the freedom given to the contributors? What is the difference between a group blog, a collection of individual blogs or a manually edited blog aggregator? What makes a blog attractive to read? I’ve also thinking about writing style this morning, and the factors that make a blog “easily digestible” - so that it is possible to appreciate the essence of the argument without having to ignore too many annoyances. If a blogger has something interesting to say, and a thought process that is logical and worth time for engagement, then what are the qualities of the writing that make a blog “sticky”? I’m not ready to post my own detailed reflections yet, but I would welcome others’ input on this debate. My Own Writing Style The only person that I am aware has commented on my writing style on this blog is the famous Blogpower curmudgeon known as “Baht At” - who could probably also be described as “Bah Humbug”, given the … er … incisive style of his reviews. He commented “decently written” - which is probably all I would hope for. There are two resources that I have found useful and challenging: The first is the Economist style guide, which lives here. The other is a Tim Worstall comment: So you wanna be a writer? OK .. write ! Tags: group blog, editorial guidelines, webmagazine, what makes a blog, plain english  

The BBC provides an archive service, which lets visitors track changes in the bbc.co.uk Homepage retrospectively. The archives go back to May 2005. Here, for example is a screenshot of the Home Page as it was when the Cutty Sark fire was reported at 8.05am on the morning of 21st May 2007. The service enables you to navigate through the BBC site by time as well as topic - if, for example, you remember that “something was on the website before I went to work” on a particular day. This is the description of the service: The Home Archive is a new service, developed to produce a comprehensive library of how the BBC Homepage changes throughout each day. It was developed by Matthew Somerville (the BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites) and was an initiative begun on backstage.bbc.co.uk. Here, you are able to see the latest changes that have gone through on the Homepage, section by section. Also if you click on the ‘Time’ links on the left hand side of the main column you can see a ’snapshot’ of how the page appeared at that time. The archive goes back to July 14, 2005 and if you click on browse by date you can view how the Homepage changed throughout each day and also how it looked at a particular time. Not every change on the Homepage is recorded, however, for example, changes to the weather forecast. Everything else is tracked though, including when the page changes to breaking news or sport or when the main promotion slot changes to full page. The links: Homearchive Service Browse Homepages by Date A useful service. One caution: the archive updates run about a month behind the current date. Tags: matthew somerville, bbc homepage archive, bbc backstage blog  

This is the fourth in my series of articles about starting a Political Blog. My first article, Starting a Political Blog I: Blogging is like Traditional Campaigning , introduced a parallel between political blogging and traditional political campaigning. The second article, Starting a Political Blog II: How to Get the Basics Right , highlighted the extreme transparency that exists when you write a blog, and the need to engage with your potential audience in a long-term strategy. The third article, “Starting a Political Blog III: Principles to Apply to be Credible“, looked at some principles to follow in order to remain credible in the blogosphere. This article outlines some technicalities involved in maintaining a blog. The technical bits of creating a blog are the boring bits, but also cause the most problems in the future if you get them wrong. These are my views, and some others will not agree. Put your blog in the right place Blogs suffer very badly when they move around the internet, because links and authority in search engines are based on specific web page addresses (called permalinks in blog-speak). A blog that moves to a new location has to start from scratch again. It can be done, but it is an intricate process that takes up your valuable time - and is not necessary when you plan properly. Read the full article over at Poliblog Perspective. Tags: political blogging, iain dale guide to political blogging, politics, matt wardman

This is the third in my series of articles about starting a Political Blog. My first article, Starting a Political Blog I: Blogging is like Traditional Campaigning , introduced a parallel between political blogging and traditional political campaigning. The second article, “Starting a Political Blog II: How to Get the Basics Right “, highlighted the extreme transparency that exists when you write a blog, and the need to engage with your potential audience in a long-term strategy. This post looks at some of the basic principles to follow in order to write a credible political blog. Principles to Apply Be transparent One major difference between blogs and newspapers is that blogs are usually more transparent. Newspapers often do not declare gifts and travel expenses paid; good bloggers do. Many blogs have their own voluntary “register of interests”. If you write about something, but do not declare a personal or financial interest, you will (rightly) be treated quite roughly when you are found out - especially if you are a public figure. Be consistent Do not start something you will not be able to maintain. Your blog is yours, and it is up to you to set your targets and to meet them. There is no problem if you wish to post daily, weekly, occasionally or even seasonally - as long as your readers know what to expect. Do not, however, give hostages to fortune. And please, do not apologise for “lack of blogging”. One of my pet hates is people who do that all the time. They would be able to do much more writing if they did much less apologising. If you find yourself needing more material for your blog, why not make it a “team” blog, or use “guest bloggers”. The latter is one good reason to develop a network of “blog friends” - or to join a network such as Blogpower (www.defendingtheblog.blogspot.com). Be circumspect A blog is a publication, and you are subject to the same laws as your local paper - without a legal specialist. Be (reasonably) circumspect, and do not give too many hostages to fortune. The Internet does not forget anything you say. Good ideas are to check two sources for anything questionable, and to ask a specialist blogger if necessary - most will give a little time to help a fellow “amateur” understand their subject. If you receive help, link back to their blog as a thank-you. Be anonymous? There is a place for the anonymous blog. The upside is that what you say will not affect your daily life and reputation - unless you are unmasked. The downside is that what you say will not affect your daily life and reputation - unless you are unmasked. If you are running a political blog aiming to help your political profile in the wider society, an anonymous blog is not an option. My blog - The Wardman Wire - is pseudonymous because I like to keep my online political writing separate from my work. Enjoy it! And finally, dont be surprised at your own success. If you stick at writing a political blog, you may find that after a year or eighteen months you have as many visitors as the circulation of your local paper. At that point you will have understood the fun of political blogging, and will have a number of new friends (and a few enemies). If you last 18 months of posting regularly and thoughtfully, you will probably deserve the success. Wrapping Up In my fourth article tomorrow, I will look briefly at some technical questions in positioning your blog on the Internet. Many political bloggers have not got the basics right in my view - whether it is sticking for too long with a blog built on somebody else’s website, or having a web address targeted to North American traffic rather than visitors from the UK. The upshot of that is that of the political bloggers profiled in Iain Dale’s Guide to Political Blogging published in the autumn of 2007, something well over half are stranded - like beached whales - on domains that are punished by Google UK in their search results.   Tags: principles to apply in political blogging, poliblog perspective