For obvious reasons, the acronym for the Troppo/On Line Opinion Best Blog Posts of 2006 acronym reminds me of the usual syntax used to abbreviate Big Brother. If Big Brother’s claim to fame was to democratise the plot of soaps, through allowing viewers to vote for those they wanted to stay in the (ir)real house, then the Blogosphere has the potential to shake up the established canons of what’s “best” in Australian writing. Sometimes, just like at Dreamworld, with a lot of yelling and shouting, but fortunately this stripe of new media is anything but what you would get from an “idiot box”.
Over at Troppo, Ken Parish and Nicholas Gruen sought nominations for best blog posts of 2006. The idea sprang from the largely disappointing selection of pieces in Black Inc’s Best Australian Essays (discussed by Gummo here and reviewed by Ken at Troppo), and a consequent desire to showcase the quality of writing in the blogosphere. The selection of posts will be highlighted both at Troppo and On Line Opinion.
This morning, On Line Opinion runs an article by Ken and Nicholas explaining the process and the outcomes. It’s also a bit of a guide to the Ozblogosphere for those new to it – as part of the purpose of the exercise is to introduce new readers to blogs. Every day, OLO will be publishing two or three of the selected posts. The feature leads off with a fabulous post, Kerryn Goldsworthy’s The Idea of Home, first published at Pavlov’s Cat.
Elsewhere: Helen Dale at Catallaxy also promotes BBP06. The intro is cross-posted at Troppo. Andrew Bartlett has some more comment on BBP06.
Reminder: In the spirit of Laura’s post encouraging the widest possible field and participation for Keks’ Australian Blog Awards 2007, don’t forget to pop over to Collective Apathy to nominate your favourite blogs in a wide range of categories. You can also suggest your favourite post of the year.
You beat me to the trackback, Mark. And if I could also second yours and Laura’s point. It’s just shouting into empty space without people getting involved.
Just testing to see whether I’ve been censored LP-wide or just on Anna’s thread. It appears banning is universally applied here.
Not so.
Well the awards would be a great idea if, you know, CA actually let you vote.
Collective Apathy therefore gets my vote as non-functional blog of 2006.
I don’t think the noms have closed yet, Christine. The voting’s normally in late January.
to ask the obvious question because no one else seems to have: why is there a science and technology blog but no humanities/arts blog category?
Is this one of the best blog posts?
It doesn’t really identify it as such.
It is, Darlene. We’re trying to get OLO to flag the BBP06 material, as well as give it a category of its own.
It’s kinda flagged, Darlene, in that the category is “feature” and the “feature” is the best blog posts. I agree it’s not massively clear though.
Also, there’s a date and location of the original post given at the end.
Yes, I noticed that, but I still think it would be useful if it were flagged a bit more prominently.
They’ve now added a tag-line to the end of each post that says the following (taken from PC’s post) and has relevant links to both the original post and CT:
The tagline is similar for everyone.