From today’s Crikey 2006 Honour Roll email:
What a difference a year makes. In 2005 the blog landscape read like the fledgling medium it was – providing interesting reading that wasn’t so consistent. This year it was just a matter of cherry picking from a selection of blogs that are daily must-reads. Two very different blogs offer a snapshot of the lightning fast rate at which blogs have developed in 2006: Larvatus Prodeo* is brought to you by a group of people who produce one of the most thoughtful, measured and insightful political blogs in the country. At the other end of the spectrum, Tim Blair continues to stir the pot. He pi-ses people off, makes observations that others miss and publishes what others won’t (he gave the finger to the major newspapers by publishing 12 of the controversial Muhammad cartoons). The better blogs are increasingly setting the agenda and changing the pace of news, and old media is scrambling to get a slice by signing bloggers up and folding them into their existing websites (Tim Blair and Tim Dunlop of Road to Surfdom have both been signed by News Limited recently). Blogs have well and truly hit the mainstream, and these guys are the cream of the crop.
*Disclosure: Mark Bahnisch, editor of Larvatus Prodeo, writes regularly for Crikey, but that doesn’t make the blog any less deserving – Crikey was a keen reader long before we got Bahnisch on board.
Honourable mentions: The Spin Starts Here – for its irreverent, b-tchy, often rude mix of politics and pop culture, and The Road to Surfdom – for its fresh and interesting take on issues of the day.
2005 Winner: Troppo Armadillo
Elsewhere: Thanks to Guy for his very kind comments at Polemica.
Who’s gonna thank the academy, their parents, the dog………….
I’d thank my cat if I still had one!
Congrats to all, you are all highly deserving!
I
blamethank alcohol!Will Glenn Milne be dropping in?
Well done guys. How are you going to better that in 2007?
heh heh. Just my acknowledgement of the tradition of drunken comments (not that this one is drunk).
Thanks, Mindy, maybe we’ll have to unearth a Macaca moment for the Federal Election?
I want to thank my pussy…
Good on youse all.
Twas the Is Missy Higgins A Lesbian post wot clinched it.
Congratulations!
Damn, Shaun stole my thunder. I was going to ask to what extent should you guys thank boozy blogging? LP is the best of the boozed blogs in Oz. I’m looking forward to being in the same timezone in Jan/Feb so I can do some drunken commenting…
Congrats!
(Although I’m going to pout – I wrote about the Mo toons and published two – and others since – in Oct 2005. But I guess I gave no one the finger well it was…um…2005.
Well done!
Well done Kim, godbeing Julia, and Mrs Slocombe. Love yez all.
All these well done’s and congratulations sound just like the spam I usually clean out at my blog. I’m waiting for “great site, look at mine!”
What do you think of my guestbook, Phil?
Great navigation, I’ll keep coming back webmaster!
I like your pallette. Can I use it at my sites? Viagra.
In a spirit designed to enjoy playing along, I posted two faux spam comments, wherein I ventriloquized spam so successfully that now even Mark can’t find them in the spaminator. So, after trying to be humourous and succeeding too well, I’ll simply congratuate you on your success.
And OK I am really late to the party (I don’t read every thread) but is it true that C.L. has been banned from LP? Yes or no?
Yes he has been, saint. I don’t know that from LP, though, but through correspondence from CL. He has been visiting Catallaxy more regularly as a consequence.
Yes.
We’ve outsourced the moderation of the site to skepticlawyer obviously!
So the answer Kim is…?
However, I shall quote this from the comments policy:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/about-larvatus-prodeo/comments-policy/
So we’re not going meta on this thread, folks. I do believe Rob has a meta thread over at his place.
I will make the broader observation about blogging that recent U-Missouri research has found that heavily moderated forums attract more readers. That appears to be born out here, where since November, our stats have taken another leap upwards.
Oh and skeptic…nice try. Doesn’t work for me.
Even if I like CL and the contributions he makes. One of my favourite bloggers/commenters.
I mad it clear where I learnt that information from, Kim, and saint asked a fair question, even if he doesn’t like us libertarians
I was joking, sl.
But we’re not having a meta discussion about moderation on this thread, please. I’ve posted the link to Rob’s place if people want to take it over there.
Kym, didn’t want a meta discussion. Just a simple yes or no.
Skeptic, you might want to have a look in the mirror before you assume what I think.
Oh wait…
Hi! Zanax! Keep it up!
How are you doing that Phil? Does this mean fishing your own comments out of the spaminator?
Sorry saint, don’t get your last comment, unless you’re another me-hater (there’s a few out there). Won’t change my view of your blog, which I visit from time-to-time & think is damn good, btw.
OK just read your comment at Rob’s. Am I correct to take that as a ‘yes’? (again I don’t want an explanation of why, or your comments policy – it’s your blog, just a ‘yes’ or ‘no’)
saint, please read the comments policy. It says that we don’t enter into discussion about moderation decisions. So I won’t be. You can stop asking now.
Anyway, back on topic.
Fantastic website… Good resources for learning, easy to follow… Keep up the good work!!! Make your opinion about my resources
Live nude amputee girls, anyone?
Heh. The Spaminator is impervious to my cunning plans.
Thanks Kim, I will take that as a yes until you or another moderator correct me.
LP, let me show you my LP.
Thanks, I’ll be here all night.
What the hell is going on? Festivus is not until the 23rd so no airing of grievances until then.
Well done LP. Great links to political blogs. Viagra for penis extensions is good political blogs. Crikey Viagra political blogs good links.
Got through!
Seriously, well done LP, for a great effort and for gracing teh blogosphere.
Thanks, lynn. Live nude amputee girls everywhere thank you for your kind words (and your Canadian pills)!
Not forgetting the poor guy who got the penis extension and waist reduction spam confused. The inches went off and on in the wrong places.
Congratulations, well done, well deserved.
Many thanks, Nicholas. As I noted last year when Troppo won, we’re keeping it in the family with a fair bit of crossover in personnel between the two blogs! Troppo’s got a very nice mix going this year too, and I think the point made by the Crikey judges is a very good one – there’s so much good stuff around picking winners must be to some degree arbitrary.
Thanks to Guy for his very kind comments at Polemica.
Kim, you naughty little Google bomber you!
Now that we’re Crikey’s blog of the year we don’t need to resort to gratuitous mention of nude barely legal lesbian teen amputee mud wrestlers to bring in the traffic.
Damn – I left out Missy Higgins!
You wish, Kim, you saucy thing.
Well done to LP, even if I still don’t know what Larvatus Prodeo means.
I named this blog my number two favourite blog at Catallaxy not long ago.
Adrian the Cabbie comes first, of course. Catallaxy come third (get more female voices, Jason, and you might usurp LP).
First of all, congrats to LP and its makers for this recent distinction. This is an excellent, well-conceived and well-designed public conversation, as I’ve often said. So, speaking of that spirit of excellence, I can’t help finally noticing all this fracas about C.L., as referenced in the above thread (and in the wacky, Dawson’s Creek-like thread over at Rob’s place).
Strictly speaking, the whole thang is none of my business of course, but still I can’t help thinking: can’t all youse folks find a way to forgive and forget, and then get back in the game? C.L. is a smart, vivid, and (maybe most importantly of all) habitually contrarian writer — so his contributions added a very special (and much-missed) tang of flava to the riffing here. I can totally understand how feelings were hurt on both/all sides; not wanting to be a referee in this, I can still see how *every*one who took offense had a bit of a point. That’s not surprising; in the tussle of human affairs, it’s rare for one party to be 100% right and the other 100% wrong. Hell, on a grander scale, that’s why a public conversation about affairs is a good thing to begin with, right? We all argue and try to find an equilibrium point. And presumably, somewhere in the heavens, there actually *is* an equilibrium point. Let it be the same w/r/t this little mess up.
Take it from a slightly better writer than me, Mr. William Shakespeare…
POET: Peace, you generals! What do you mean?
Love and be friends, as two such men should be;
For I’ve seen more years, I’m sure, than thee.
CASSIUS: How vilely doth this cynic rhyme.
Well, that’s all I’m going to say about this. I’m going to butt my nose back out, and move on to other things.
(pause)
Can ye sing ‘The Rose of Tralee,’ lads?
Hey, don’t forget us weird dudes! You lefties would all get a bit set in your ways without us hanging around.
An award from Crikey. It’s like winning syphilis.
And how — either way — would you know that, Tim?
Oh for heaven’s sake, CL was/is a one note bore, whose responses were so mind numbingly predictable that he consistently ruined an otherwise interesting thread. Irrespective of the merits or otherwise of Mark’s decision to ban him, LP is a better place without his particular brand of moral relativism.
Syphillis isn’t won, it’s earned. And just like the approval of the mainstream market-based commercial media, it’s preventable with the use of simple precautions, and eminently treatable if caught early.
What I want to know is: why the hell does the spaminator hate me when I’ve never mentioned a damn thing about naked live amputee girls?
CL was LP’s very own Pulp fiction Gimp.
The inexplicability of his masochism made him all the more entertaining.
I miss the fervid little flagellant.
… I’ve never mentioned a damn thing about naked live amputee girls?
That might even be the problem, Kate!
You know, Obs, I think that never a truer thing has been said by you on this blog.
Congrats to LP – I know I will have withdrawal symptoms when I am without the interweb on my great trek south (yes, some people go days without it). Though I have the thought that a) I will get to spend time in BrisVegas and b) I am moving back to civilization to see me through.
Maybe we can ask the great leader to scrap the citizenship test and just have would be citizens read LP instead?
I’m with Tim.
Rebekka — I’m both ways. I prefer LP for the comments, and Tim Blair for the posts. Honours even.