The Week in Bloggingportal: My Euroblog is Better Than Yours!
THIS WEEK the eurosphere has been particularly self-obsessed. It’s not our fault, though! A big-shot PR firm came rolling into town and released a ranking of the top euroblogs. There then followed a furious, self-indulgent debate across the blogosphere (and twittersphere – hashtag: #bbs10) about the report.
I was particularly critical of the report – but there were also posts by Jon Worth, Blogactiv, Mathew Lowry, Open Europe, The European Citizen, Bit More Complicated, Lacomeuropeenne (FR), Ralf Grahn, and many more. Much of the coverage was critical - focusing on the fact that the report imported a methodology designed for the US blogosphere and excluded all non-English EU blogs.
UPDATE: Ralf Grahn has (as usual) provided an excellent and comprehensive round-up of the entire Waggener Edstrom debate in the eurosphere.
We conducted our own quick poll this week. The results were (unfortunately) completely inconclusive – everybody liked different blogs! This says a lot about the health of the EU blogosphere if no two Bloggingportal editors had the same list of top blogs. Three blogs, however, did manage to tie for first place (in no particular order):
(1st place – Editors’ Choice) L’Europe en Blogs
(1st place - Editors’ Choice) Grahnlaw
(1st place- Editors’ Choice) Writing for (y)EU
Well done to all of them! I’ve collected the rest of the blogs nominated by our editors in a poll below – so please vote for your 5 favourite! Next Sunday, we’ll announce the results of the Readers’ choice.
Which are your top 5 euroblogs?
- Writing for (y)EU (30%, 27 Votes)
- Treffpunkt Europa (23%, 21 Votes)
- Lobby Planet (22%, 20 Votes)
- Nosemonkey's EUtopia (21%, 19 Votes)
- Jon Worth's Euroblog (20%, 18 Votes)
- Grahnlaw (17%, 15 Votes)
- FT Brussels Blog (16%, 14 Votes)
- Jean Quatremer - Coulisses de Bruxelles (16%, 14 Votes)
- Europasionaria (14%, 13 Votes)
- Eurogoblin.eu (14%, 13 Votes)
- Kosmopolito (12%, 11 Votes)
- The European Citizen (9%, 8 Votes)
- Europaeum.eu (9%, 8 Votes)
- Ooh! Brussels (9%, 8 Votes)
- Waltzing Matilda (8%, 7 Votes)
- Lacomeuropeene (8%, 7 Votes)
- Mathew's Tagsmanian Devil (7%, 6 Votes)
- Public Affairs 2.0 (6%, 5 Votes)
- Bit More Complicated... (6%, 5 Votes)
- Gulf Stream Blues (6%, 5 Votes)
- L'Europe en Blogs (6%, 5 Votes)
- The Lobby (4%, 4 Votes)
- Bruxelles2 (4%, 4 Votes)
- Martin Westlake (4%, 4 Votes)
- Michael Geist on ACTA (3%, 3 Votes)
- The Economist - Eastern Approaches (3%, 3 Votes)
- Jochen Bittner - Planet in Progress (3%, 3 Votes)
- Cosmetic Uprise (3%, 3 Votes)
- Honor Mahoney - Behind the Scenes (2%, 2 Votes)
- Mount EUlympus (0%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 90
Loading ...THE CLOAK AND DAGGER POLITICS OF MEPS
Christian Engström, a Swedish Pirate Party MEP, has blogged about walking out of an ACTA meeting (concerning a controversial piece of legislation on intellectual property rights) because he was told the contents of the meeting were to be hidden from the public. I’ve given up waiting for the minutes of the SWIFT meeting (concerning anti-terrorism legislation) to ever be released – likewise with the EAS meeting minutes (about the new EU diplomatic corps). Not that committee minutes would be particularly exciting – but the fact that MEPs won’t release them (and that none of these meetings were broadcast by webcam) highlights the opaque nature of European Parliamentary politics when anything controversial is at stake.
These secretive committee meetings (ACTA, SWIFT and the EAS) come at the same time as a report by Danish MEP and former journalist Morten Lokkegaard, who tells us that “access to information for citizens and communication between policy-makers and voters are central elements” to democracy. British MEP Mary Honeyball writes that “many [MEPs] are desperate for our, i.e. EU and Euro Parl, news to become mainstream and raised out of its current Euro ghetto.” If that’s the case, perhaps you could start by webcasting all committee meetings – not just the uncontroversial ones.
BETTER KNOW A EUROBLOG (#BKAEB)
In honour of @mteu’s suggestion for a #followfriday for euroblogs – this week’s #BKAEB is James Stevens, an EU native in D.C. working for PR firm Fleishman-Hillard. He promises to offer us an insight into US politics from an EU-perspective – and tells us that Washington isn’t always doing things bigger and better: “Brussels could do with some of Washington and Washington could do with some of Brussels.”
MULTI-LINGUAL FILM COMPETITION
Can you speak more than one language? Do you own a camera? Can you make a multi-lingual swords-and-sandals epic about the history of Rome starring sock-puppets? If you satisfy two out of those three criteria – then consider applying for Global Voices’ European multilingualism video competition.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by kosmopolit, kosmopolit, Bloggingportal.eu, JEF Deutschland, Caroline De Cock and others. Caroline De Cock said: RT @bloggingportal: The @bloggingportal editors nominated 30 #euroblogs as their favourites.Vote for your top 5! http://bit.ly/bDl64r #bbs10 [...]
[...] I’ve collected the rest of the blogs nominated by our editors in a poll below – so please vote here for your 5 favourite! Next Sunday, we’ll announce the results of the Readers’ [...]
Voted, but found it very hard to restrict the choice to only five fine euroblogs, when a number of excellent ones had to be left outside.
Excellent initiative with surprising results indeed!
I think the fact that there were as many top 5 Euroblogs as bloggingportal editors says a lot about what blogging is about. We all read blogs for different reasons and simply have different tastes! It takes all kinds to make a world…
Unfortunately I do not have the time nor the energy to read all your blogs (which I am sure are all excellent), so my vote is limited to the blogs I have read. I rely mainly on my network to tweet me the absolute must-reads.
Thanks to everybody who take the time to scrutinize us here in the institutions. How can there be democracy without debate and critical thinking?!
Hm, I wonder whether I should take this vote hostage? Nah, I won’t! It’s interesting to see which blogs are currently hot. But as usual, where’s a vote there’s a campaign. Anyway, I’m totally happy to be even nominated. It’s so rocking my motivation after a two months period of euroblog laggardness on my side.
HINT: Perhaps it would be a good a idea to link the blogs in the list for those who haven’t visited some of them, yet? What do you say?
Nice response so far – and still a week until the poll closes.
@Martin – Unfortunately, the WP-poll plugin doesn’t support links. Would a list of links to the blogs look ugly? Maybe we’ll experiment with the next poll.
I would like to thank the members of my family and my 4 readers for voting for my blog but, for future purposes, I do agree with some comments that suggested making categories (if only because as one of the rare lobbyists blogging, I’d probably make it to the top ten of my category in a breeze
)
Good idea. Next time we hold a poll, we can arrange it into categories (and perhaps make it a bit more comprehensive – these were the editors picks, but a lot of great euroblogs have been left out).
My problem was more that 5 votes seemed not enough as the listed blogs are all great but depending on category, for different reasons, often dependent on what is “behind” the blog (i.e. I appreciate an FT blog in a very different manner to a Eurogoblin post and if it’s an “or” choice, I will vote for the non-professional one as I appreciate the effor more, whilst if the FT one was in a specific “journo” category, and it would then become an “and” vote, I’d go for both)
The way to go seems to have multiple categories, and one vote per category.
Categories for the win! I apply to be nominated in category: “German euroblogs, that have a white background, are written by a single amateur male author aged is between 25 and 30, that never blogged about #catcontent but is nevertheless on twitter”. I might even finish top 25. Wish me luck.
So it’s decided then, right? We hold our very first (yet already annual) bloggingportal awards (”the bubbles”), where bloggingportal readers submit their suggestions and vote for them. (Only we should disable the multiple voting as far as we can, or do we introduce a jury?)
First let’s find more blogs and let bloggingportal help in that. (Then let’s find more time to actually read and comment on them.) #buzzkillnotintended
Martin – you are a breath of reason and fresh air in the blogosphere.
But I think we can safely hold a poll without forgetting the outside world exists. Next time – we will hold a poll to see if people approve of polls.
But is adding interactivity to the Week in Bloggingportal really a bad idea? Why?
[...] tiny, hyperspecialised bubble, talking about EU arcana noone else understands – and, increasingly, talking about ourselves. With barely any bridges connecting us to other online [...]
Eurogoblin, you might notice that I’m slowly but surely (Germans love that expression, not sure others do) getting cynical about all that. Sorry. I don’t blame #bbs10 and indeed I’m really happy that we’re having such momentum. As I mentioned earlier I do not whish to kill it, this creative power that you and lots of others invest.
A lot of people are rethinking what they are as eurobloggers, some left the bubble others might join if we show that new blogs, new topics are welcomed by this unprecise group of the EU geeks. And that we allow other groups to develop and to exist (i.e. I see a potential for some French bloggers here).
Bloggingportal is not about the top 50 euroblogs, it’s about the European public sphere, isn’t it? Still, we all know there are plenty other exciting blogs out there.
So my comment was only half ironic. It’s good thing that we draw attention to some blogs. That’s why the editors each picked their most favourite. Hell, I’m excited to be even nominated. But at the moment I’m very reluctant in accepting that bloggingportal is extending its editorial content. I like the WiB, yet I love the editors’ choice feed. Let’s leave the other stuff to the blogs. And if we continue to grow as a euoblogosphere, then it’s up to bloggingportal to hold its first “the bubble” awards.
Agreed – it is a temptation to become a self-referential bubble of blogs. But we also need to have an attractive community which is active and engaged with one another if we are going to convince more people to take part in the conversation.
I am also excited by the developments in the French blogosphere. I hope we can at least merge the English and French euroblogospheres into an “Anglo-French” sphere. Do you think it would be possible to gather similar momentum to the French effort in the German EU blogosphere? At least an “Anglo-Franco-German blogosphere” would be a very attractive start for a real, European public sphere.
Replace self-referential by eager to learn, and you begin to see some of the qualities top athletes are made of.
I am working on a series of blog posts, trying to look at different aspects of better Euroblogging, from the #bbs10 report to the #bkaeb hash tag.
At this stage my impression is that there is need and room for many more Euroblogs, covering different aspects from high politics to mundane technical details (important for firms and jobs).
However, different national and linguistic communities (as proposed in the French debate) might lead to higher “border controls” and less interaction.
Why not go for multilingual comments to lower barriers?
The French don’t want separate bubbles but will start the effort in their own language, which is normal. A multilingual platform was discussed but we all know how challenging and time consuming that is.
As already discussed, if we already started by commenting in blogs in different languages than ours that would already be a big step forward!
[...] ich doch die vielen Blogs aus viel zu unterschiedlichen Gründen. Als Resultat wurden die Nennungen veröffentlicht, und stehen nun bis zum nächsten Sonntag zu einer öffentlichen Abstimmung. [...]
@Eurogoblin
No, I don’t think the German euroblogs will be able to pick up such a momentum for several reasons. Mostly because I don’t think there is such a thing as a German speaking euroblogosphere. There is almost no interaction between blogs, a discussion on EU politics isn’t taking place on twitter (or elsewhere) like it does in French or English. And there are many reasons for that.
Among the list of blogs up here there is only two and a half German speaking euroblogs, although many others are maintained by Germans (or German speakers). And only the half one is actually taking part in our discussions.
[...] There’s a long way to go before Ooh, Brussels! is as good as their blogs, or as good as any of the others listed along with this one on the Fleishman-Hillard’s selection of Euroblogs or the Blogging Portal’s list of blogs. [...]
[...] geht, mehr können wir euch in diesem Moment leider auch nicht sagen. All denjenigen, die uns auf Bloggingportal ihre Stimme gegeben haben, möchte wir an dieser Stelle herzlich danken. Es ist für uns eine [...]
[...] THIS HAS been, without doubt, one of the busiest weeks we’ve ever had here at Bloggingportal towers. There have been so many great conversations going on in the blogosphere that the Editor-in-Chief has been reduced to a gibbering wreck trying to get us to cover them all. Firstly, let’s congratulate the European Parliament’s web team over at Writing for (y)EU – the winners of last week’s Readers’ Poll! [...]
[...] qui a résulté en une liste de 30 blogs. Après cela, les lecteurs du Blogging Portal ont pu voter pour leur 5 blogs préférés. Les résultats ont été annoncés [...]
[...] their favourite Euroblogs and ended up with a list of 30. Then Blogging Portal users could cast a vote online for their top 5 Euroblogs. The results were announced [...]