* In the Best Major Blog category, the winner was “c jane enjoy it,” a wonderful, profoundly personal, utterly non-political blog by a writer in Idaho. Placing in a close second was “Autoblog,” a blog about cars, where some politics may be mentioned insofar as cars intersect with politics (such as gasoline taxes and such), but hardly a political blog. Instapundit loped in at a distant third.

* “The Stupid Shall Be Punished” won the Best Up and Coming Blog award. This blog is by a sailor about life on a U.S. Navy submarine, and does not seem to touch upon politics except very occasionally, and even then not to argue for any position.

The two categories above are not “genre blog” polls, they were competing against any and all blogs in their size range, including political blogs. The fact that apolitical blogs won these categories shows how the appeal of The Weblog Awards is becoming more generalized.

* Meanwhile in Best Food Blog, “Cake Wrecks” walked away with 31,152 votes! This is by far more votes than any other blog earned in any category. This is significant, because it suggests that “Cake Wrecks” could have won Best Blog, if only it had been nominated. Nominating, like voting, is open to anyone in the world. Perhaps next year.

* And even among political blogs, the contests are becoming more inclusive; it is worthy of some notice than for the first time, a foreign blog has won Best Conservative Blog. How far such terms as “conservative” and “liberal” can be stretched across national borders is a thought-provoking question (and at least for me, a puzzling one). But, there it is.

There is truth in what you say about The Weblog Awards having “come from the world of political blogging.” More particularly, it came from the world of conservative American political blogging, in 2003. But implicit in one’s having come from a place is the fact that one is no longer in that original place.

The Weblog Awards, under the governance of Kevin Aylward, has always strived to include more blogs, more categories, and more voters, from all nations and all niches and genres of blogging. Every year, our audience expands a bit further, into areas of the blogosphere removed several paces from the political realm. If we have not penetrated as far into the non-political genres as we might wish, it is not through a lack of intention. What slows this expansion is simply the rate at which bloggers everywhere learn that The Weblog Awards exist. We’re trying to spread the word here at our end.

This year, some of the finalists in the geographic categories were not political at all, though none of these won. In future years, I can easily imagine a food blog, or photo blog, or literature blog, winning “Best Blog” or “Best UK Blog.”

- I think Created in Birmingham is a great blog;
- I think Created in Birmingham is much more constructive and positive than Melanie Phillips’ blog;
- Like Jon, I’d rather help good things win than watch bad things win;
- I can’t stand Melanie Phillips.

So a mess of personal, moral and political reasons drove me to vote.

Definitely there was an element of anti-Phillips-ness going on – maybe if she wasn’t in the running I would have paid more attention to the other blogs (such as Olly’s Onions, which I enjoy) – but certainly I believe that CiB won because people felt it was more deserving.

And the reason I like CiB so much is precisely because it takes a neutral political stance. I think its strength is in bringing people, art and issues, encouraging people to engage and make up their own minds through discussion. So my opinion is encourage criticism yes, but don’t lead it.

Besides, promoting the arts in this city is a big enough task in itself, and an uphill one at that. There are hundreds of things happening every week that are still overlooked without telling artists and arts orgs people what they should be doing.

However, I do agree that a critical voice is lacking I just don’t think CiB should be that voice. Actually, I had hopes for http://birminghamcounterculture.blogspot.com/ but it fizzled after a few fairly incoherent posts.

As Jon says, I think CiB can happily host/refer to discussions once they’ve been started or raise issues for the community to discuss.

Anyway, that’s all just my personal thinking on the issue. It’s Kate’s place now and she’s free to do with it as she likes.

I sort of agree Dave, but I don’t think CiB is the place to do it. If you mean telling organisations like the council or ACE or Screen WM what’s what then I think there’s a useful role in CiB “hosting” discussions so people easily make thier views know. For it to have a position – like a person or a newspaper does – would lead it to all sorts of trouble. In times when it’s allowed people to talk about things – eg. “design competitions” or “pay to play” it’s worked really well, if it had started with a position I don’t think it would have been as constructive.

For CiB to take a role in pointing out good or bad “art” is pretty much impossible — although properly done criticism is something the Brum art scene badly needs.

On the political blog front — I do tend to read the best of them, from all sides, but shy away from the comment threads, where nothing is ever changed from entrenched positions. I actually tend to read more of the right-wing ones – know your enemy and all that.

And on awards – I don’t like them, but I’d still rather good things won than bad.

CiB may be a case in point, given the clear association with a named individual. While a lot of what CiB does falls into the realm of local PR, the way it is done gives CiB a higher profile than most of the other arts/creative/media PR websites in the area. Why? Possibly because there’s a feeling of participation, that elusive quality of engagement which money can’t buy. If, for example, Chris hadn’t made it a clearly stated personal mission to win the award, would the rest of us have joined in the effort? I kinda doubt it.

Back to the main point: can blogging be defined? Well, yes, sort of. And I believe you mean that it’s worth making the effort to keep it that way.

You make some interesting points about the personal being political and in that way everything we write shows up our position in some way, whether explicitly in criticism of a party or person or in what we choose to write or not write about. You missed out my tweet to you saying that I kind of like the scrapping that political blogs offer up and that we should take time to listen to views that are at the edges. Staying too long in the middle ground is part of the problem with modern politics and we’d do well to look back at the Arts scene in this city in the mid-70s when it was way more politically active and partially, party political.

As CIB moves on again in authorship I wonder if that’s what it could do with. A bit more politics, a clearer position being taken, as an agitator for, rather than simply advocator of, the arts. As it looks around at what’s happening in Brum perhaps it should be brave enough to point out what’s lacking, or at least be up for critiquing that which doesn’t make the grade. We’re keen for this sector to have a voice (that’s why Creative Republic was invented after all) but until that voice is prepared to step outside the comfort zone it all feels a bit well, safe. We’re in danger of reflecting the current party politics in Brum, hung, bland and indecisive.

As for the best in UK bloging? I think we can dismiss this as a crackpot survey.

Your right in the sense that I don’t expose myself to political blogs and that coming across Melanie’s introduced me to a readership I couldn’t relate to. It was full of conspiracy theorists and it reminded me of all the 9/11 stuff that’s banded about, and I’ve spent hours online, watching the documentaries, reading alternative theories etc. not that I have a problem with any of that, it’s important to have counter arguments etc available.
I think I took exception to the fact that I believed some of her faithful didn’t understand the reach the CiB community had. Coupled with her post stirring up emotions with indications of foul play. I suppose I look at the amount of votes CiB acquired and thought it was plausible that through our tweeting, requests of re-tweets, blog posts, personal voting etc that the figure was plausible. Despite losing a few followers along the way, I was able to convey and convince a good chunk of followers to support CiB. It boils down to the fact I disagreed and took exception to her following who were unable to comprehend that something like CiB could be classed as good and that “dark arts” were at play. Anyway, time to move on.