Sunday 10 January 2010

Review 2009: Berkshire Blog of the Year Awards

The Reading List Top Of The Berkshire Blogs has gone from strength to strength since I started compiling the chart in May 2009.

It started out with 16 blog titles listed by wikio and grew to 152 by the years end. In the meantime 35 blogs had also dropped off the list as they became inactive by December.

As I gradually started discovering more active titles it became more difficult to find space on my main site to house the chart, but it also began to become apparent that tracking the movement of the different blogs would give an indication of the shifting patterns of opinion across the county - and that this would make a valuable story in its' own right.

So here is a collection of links to the charts and analyses I made during the period.

May 2009

June 2009
July 2009
August 2009
September 2009 - analysis
October 2009 - analysis
November 2009 - analysis
December 2009 - analysis

Overall there has been some interesting fluctuations with the better blogs rising towards the top of the chart and those that were consistently good consolidating their positions.

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Berkshire Blogs of the Year 2009

Of particular note was Mark Reckons which rose from #3 (68th nationally) to be unrivalled as Berkshire's Top Blog, sitting pretty at 16th nationally.

Bracknell Blog made some impressive gains to move from #8 (567th) to #5 (182nd), but the award for most successful blog for 2009 must undoubtedly go to Mr London Street which made its' full debut in September at #22 (1,002nd) before climbing to #14 (583rd), becoming a 'blog of note' and increasing the number of public followers from 162 to almost 1,000 (at the time of writing) with a highly entertaining and often touching collection of personal story-telling.

Awards:

Most successful Berkshire blog:
- Mr London Street

Most influential Berkshire blog:
- Mark Reckons

Commended:
- Bracknell Blog

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Berkshire Blogger of the Year 2009

This is a more difficult category to decide upon, with a wide variety of styles and types of blog writing to choose between.

Political writing has been at the forefront of blog content in the past year, with Daisy Benson's Redlands LibDems and John Redwood's eponymously-titled Diary standing out for consistency, and deserving honorable mentions.

In the professional sphere Nigel Morgan deserves praise for Creating Reputations, while Graham Jones's blog and NevilleHobson.com consistently set standards in multi-media inter-connectivity. Elsewhere Dave Walker's both serious and light-hearted efforts at religious blogging for the Church Times and his Cartoon Church are regularly excellent.

But because blogging is about more than just writing, for the breadth and scale of their work it comes down to a clear choice between Mark Thompson (for Mark Reckons, his guest contributions on a variety of sites and co-producing the House of Comments weekly podcast) and Alistair Coleman (for transcending his Scaryduck site to create a whole network of satirical, scabrous commentary - including Glum Councillors, Angry People in Local Newspapers, Death Pool and numerous others).

In the end I felt it unfair to choose between them (and also because the decision is at the discretion of the judges) it was necessary to inaugurate two separate awards.

Awards:

Best single blog post:
- Mark Thompson
(for Has our electoral system contributed to the MPs expenses scandal?)

Best overall contribution to blogging:
- Alistair Coleman
(for Scaryduck network)

Commended:
- Neville Hobson, Dave Walker




Well it's only a bit of fun really, so go and bask in the reflected glory!

Or better yet, show your support by visiting the links... and enjoy!

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Review 2009

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