Lords of the Blog

You may have spotted a theme in my witterings over the last few weeks with my references to democracy and the importance of participation in it. All to often politics is conducted at megaphone level with the media and the press filtering (and molding) the message of the man/women on the street and the politicians responding. The advent of the circuitry of internet allowing grassroots movements to form and discuss while bypassing the potentially partisan media can only be a good thing.

With that backdrop it was good to see another political blog added to the frame. The Lords of the Blog is a multi-author experiment being run by the Hansard society where sitting members of the House of Lords post their thoughts and views on a range of topics. Refreshingly they don't seem to be afraid answer comments and develop on their arguments. Blogs work best when the actual blog post is the start of the conversation and the author holds a discussion with the commentators. Sometimes, as is the case with a lot of the BBC blogs, the author just posts and never responds to the comments made (or merely notes the volume of comments in their next piece). This misses the opportunity to engage with the audience although I guess the Lords temporal may have a bit more time to read and digest comments than your typical rushed journalist.

A blog that doesn't allow commenting isn't really a blog at all. It's just a PR publishing engine that happens to use blog software.