Modesty shouldn’t prevent me from noting that LP won three categories in the Australian Blog Awards – Best Political Blog (against a strong field), Best Collaborative Blog, and Best Queensland Blog. We had a narrow miss in the Best New Blog category.
Andrew Bartlett’s quite right to observe that one of the great things about these awards is finding excellent new blogs to read, so I’d encourage everyone to have a look at the nominations for all sorts of new bloggy goodness.
We should also note various LP bloggers and LP friends’ success.
David Tiley’s Barista is an extremely well deserved winner of Best Australian Blog.
Flutey tops the NSW pops. Stoush.net is biting at Flutey’s heels, runner up after only 13 weeks’ blogging.
Laura’s in second place as Best Victorian Blog (the winner being Mr Lefty), and deservedly gets the gong for Best Post.
Comrades Rob and Anthony are the top two WA blogs respectively.
Miss Piss comes in second as Best Tassie Blog but maybe she should do all of her readers a favour and blog more regularly!
And Tim Dunlop’s Road to Surfdom proves its perennial favourite status as Best O/S Blog and Best SA Blog (nice to see Pavlov’s Cat featuring strongly in the ballot too), while Troppo scores Best NT Blog (Hello, Ken, also a reminder to get posting again!)…
Zoe, I reckon you were cheated by underhanded campaign techniques!.
Now, there’s room to debate the basis on which these awards were given out. But I’d make a few points. First, some of the grumbling will come from Tim Blair fans – even though Tim declined nomination. Tim always wins the American blog awards Oz category, probably because he has a large American readership.
Secondly, not every good site will be in the running for the Australian Blog Awards, because it relies on nominations, rather than the judgement of an “expert panel”. But, in contrast to such commercial awards, Vlado’s awards are the only ones internal to the Oz blogosphere and dependent only on Oz blog readers’ nominations and votes. It’s also worth observing that unlike the US awards, people couldn’t vote on multiple occasions and the great Australian tradition of preferential voting was also used.
I’d also note, unlike some other shameless sites, LP did not run a ticket, encourage our readers to vote for us, or offer sexual favours for votes.
Anyway, I’m very proud, and very grateful to our readers for these accolades. And I think the entire process, regardless of quibbles, shows what a vibrant and interesting blogosphere we’re blessed with in Australia. Congrats to all winners, and all nominees! We love youse all!
Woohoo!
Big congrats and smooches to all the worthy winners and nominees!
(Am I being naughty and retrospectively offering sexual favours?)…
Shamelessness compels me to point out I also came second – utterly bizarrely – in the best aussie photoblog category, after Daniel Boud. Clearly next to stunning photographs of hot young things and rock gods, Australians like blurry photographs of cats. Apropos of nothing I must also mention that Mr Lefty has recently acquired a kitten.
Also it’s good to know that Tim Blair doesn’t always win US / global blog awards. He’s not even a finalist in the current ones, the Bloggies, which are the realest blog awards going I’d say. Shauny won the ozblog category last year, Loobylu the year before that. I’m more than happy to have these women represent Australian blogging to the rest of the world.
This is a complete and utter travesty! Anyone in his right mind knows that Just James should have carried off every award!
But seriously, congrats to all …
Ben Lee to Robert Corr’s Bernard Fanning!
Lovely results all round for lots of my faves and congratulations all.
The LP success is a real tribute to Mark’s original decision to set up the group blog, and way it attracts such good people.
From my particular perspective, having LP and Club Troppo to read before zooming off to Mr Quiggin and then Crooked Timber, with some South Seas Republic thrown in leaves my grain browning with effort at the end.
Mental equivalent of a daily workout, intercut with personal visions to change the reflective tone.
Particularly lovely that a bunch of people have now been blogging for a long time, like boynton, gummo, gianna and loobylu.
Subtle riches all over the place. !!!!!!!
Well done LP chaps and chapessses. Thought I’m bit wary of any poll where’s there no paper trail.
One point though. Surfdom ain’t exactly an o/s blog now Tim’s living in Adelaide. On the other hand it is South Australia.
And oh yeah. David Tiley, you dah man!
Hello darlings. Let’s see how you go in the awards next year when R.H. isn’t your Chairman.
Bumfaces!
I know you’re in a snitty mood, R.H., but there’s no need to be gratuitously rude.
congrats guys.
sure hope you get to compete against catallaxy and troppo next year.
Rudeness is always gratuitous sugarplum.
Who’d pay for it?
I might pay for a juicy plum!
So how was the Sydney grogbloggy thing?
In my view, Miss Piss came first, because the winner should be disqualified on the grounds that it is not a blog.
Congratulations everyone! LP deserves everything it got.
I’m so electorally dyslexic that it took me a while to work out that I came somewhere too (second by preferences in Best Personal Blog, but I think Jungle Jamie got more primaries!)
I’m pretty happy with that, and also with the number of new blogs to read from lurking around the nominations. I think that’s the best part of the process!
How can you win Best Queensland Blog when most of your bloggers are not based in QLD? Possibly it is a retrospective accolade for Mark’s sterling solo work.