Best tool ever to list and find political blogs? Try it - search by state, political party and name. Add yours now!
by Lisa StoneDo you write or read political blogs? Do you hunt for new ones by state and/or party? Have we got the widget for you:
We're excited to announce our latest project, BlogHer's Guide to Political Bloggers, brought to you by BlogHer's politics team and our friends at Cerado. While we love the many blog-lists that abound of amazing political blogging by women, we got tired of trying to guess which state bloggers are from and/or which party they're in or leaning toward. That's why, as a non-partisan guide to women who blog, BlogHer has developed a widget that you can instantly categorize your blog in and find other bloggers. You can:
* Search by state
* Search by blogger's first or last name
* Search by political party using our color key:
Blue = Democrat
Green = Green
Gray = Undecided
Khaki = Libertarian
Orange = Independent
Purple = Other/Multiparty
Red = Republican
This guide is incredibly easy to use --both to list your blog and then to post on your blog, too. We've pre-loaded it with a few bloggers we know, but hey -- we don't want to make a mistake about where you live and what you think! So rather than pour all 700-ish blogs from the BlogHer Politics blogroll into the mix, we think it's better if you add your blog. Here's how:
How do I add a blog?
A: Click the "Add Yourself" link and answer the questions. You'll be added as soon as you publish!
How do I edit or remove a blog listing?
A: Please email help@blogher.com and put "Guide to Political Bloggers" in the subject line.
How do I put the guide on my site?
A: Go to http://www.blogher.com/bloghers-guide-political-bloggers for more info. (As you'll see, you can download a skinny sidebar widget that's 160x600 pixels or a square widget that's 300x250 pixels.)
How do I reach political bloggers in the guide?
A: Click on a blog name to go to that blog's homepage.
How do I read the guide on my iPhone?
A: Go to http://www.blogher.com/bloghers-guide-political-bloggers for info.
What powers this widget?
A: You. Go add yourself already! And our friends at Cerado, who built it for us using Cerado Ventana (tm).
We hope you're as excited as we are -- this is just one more way in which BlogHer is trying to put the question "Where are the women bloggers?" to rest forever, and to get the word out about what all of you are doing.
So tell us - what do you think of it? What would you do differently? What should our next widget be about?
Really looking forward to your feedback...and a special shout-out to the team who worked so hard on this: BlogHer's Denise Tanton, Morra Aarons-Mele, Erin Kotecki Vest and Cerado's Chris Carfi and Sarah Dopp.
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Comments
The iPhone part is the coolest...and just in
time for PA, NC, IN
Thank you all for making this happen! Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Indiana bloggers, please make yourselves known so we can get the inside scoop over the next few weeks!
Morra
I wish I had an iPhone
I love this widget!!! I now have it on my sidebar, and I have also blogged about it.
But...I don't have an iPhone. :-(
Contributing Editor Catherine Morgan
CatherineBlogs, The Political Voices of Women, Care2 Election Blog
Me too!
I was just saying that I'm going to have make enough in my writing to justify an iPhone! but I don't know if I REALLY want one - could be dangerous
Jill
Writes Like She Talks
Agreed Morra, and thanks to all for the new
tool.
This will make it so much easier to find people who are writing about - and may also be at - the events that we cover, in addition to just general political issues.
Politics is not my main beat, but since I'm in DC I occasionally pitch in. It'll be great to be able to share what more community members have to say, as an alternative to the easier-to-find highly-trafficked blogs and MSM outlets. It gets so tiresome, the sound of my own voice. ;)
Laurie
LaurieWrites
Very cool
I'll be forwarding it to my local teacher's association! They asked me how they could find political blogs in Utah.
Kalyn Denny
Kalyn's Kitchen
Okay, now that's cool!
Except i don't read political blogs, I'll wait patiently while it expands....
Is it a Drupal module? Is it going back to the OS community?
For the rest of us, there is a great site, AllTop, which aggregates the top blogs in a given sector. It was started by Guy Kawasaki and he picks his favorite blogs in a subject matter and aggregates them... He is passionate about including small "nobodies" alongside the biggies, and has a great nose, so they're a great site. No mess, just blogs. In every category you can think of - sports, mommy, business, music etc....
(And yes, I'm partial because he includes Start Her Up as one of the top business blogs about StartUps. No, I don't know him.)
___________
Alyssa Royse
JUST CAUSE: A Web Site To Save The World
Start Her Up: A blog for Women Entrepreneurs
YEAH! I can blab about it now!
I know I know it's not about me* but all I can think of is, YEAH! I can post it now. :)
Thank you for the foresight and thought in making this tool happen.
So cool.
*Proof being that, with a last name Zimon and a blog that starts with a W, people will have to be interested enough to click to the next 25 to find me! :) And that is JUST fine! May there be a day when people have to click through hundreds of female political blogs to get to mine!!
Jill
Writes Like She Talks
Miller Zimon
Hah. Adding the "Miller" in there moved you up. ;-)
And, what I like is the default view is a random listing, which means sometimes Writes Like She Talks is at the top! :-)
~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings
I emailed but a note for others to check
The link to my blog, from the widget, is my old link. Folks who are on there might want to double-check also - I just thought I'd see what happeened! :)
(I emailed you Denise!)
Jill
Writes Like She Talks
Fixed
:-)
~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings
Nicely done
Wonderful widgetry. Congrats to all involved!
Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|
Okay - the search thingy.
That seems to have my screen stuck - what should I see if I put in a search term like "new york" or "morgan" for Catherine?
Thank you. I'm playing all day.
Jill
Writes Like She Talks
Still cool, but...
I still love this tool - well done!
But now that I clicked through it from Jill's blog I have a question. The first 3 blogs I looked at had nothing to do with politics. They were fine blogs, but had nothing to do with politics at all.... So the tool is only as useful people's ability to get what they came for. I didn't go to read about Hello Kitty collections, and that's the first thing I found.
I wonder if maybe you need to still have people submit their blogs, but you might have to approve them? Branding maven in me trying to protect really cool thing that you guys did. It's a great piece of work, really remarkable.....
___________
Alyssa Royse
JUST CAUSE: A Web Site To Save The World
Start Her Up: A blog for Women Entrepreneurs
What is a political blogger?
I think it's important to look deeper than the first post or three on a blog - many political bloggers also blog... hello kitty and gardening and a zillion other life topics.
Having said that, I will also say that we'll be monitoring the blogs that are added and remove blogs that don't include political blogging at all.
So far, there are no blogs on the list that don't contain some political blogging and in most cases they contain a LOT of political blogging.
I am interesting though in which three blogs you clicked, Alyssa.
~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings
Good Question
This is "like" the hardest question for me about blogging in general. How (and arguably WHY) do we categorize ourselves?
To ME (and only me, aint nothing sayin' i'm right!) a political blog is one in which the vast majority of the content is about politics - campaigns, elections, trends, controversies, unforeseen consequences, societal issues.... A Political blog is one that I would turn to in order to get information about politics. Would that blog sometimes veer off into the ether of "real life?" Gum in hair, foul moods, crushes and movies that enraged or inspired? Probably. But I would need to know that no matter what, I could find political insight on a blog that had been categorized as a political blog.
So, when I go to Sin City Siren (which is a really fun blog) and there is no political content at all, it makes me question the usefulness of the "list." Will I still have to go through the whole list and find which ones are actually about politics?
For what it's worth, this is the same inner dialog I have with myself all the time. I know that with JUST CAUSE, I wanted to keep a blog. BUT, surprisingly to me, I became MUCH more interested in blogging about the business than my "causes." I knew it didn't fit as a cause blog on JUST CAUSE, which was why I started Start Her Up. Start Her Up is only useful to it's readers if it talks about running a startup. It is a business blog that people know they can turn to in order to find insight into building a startup.
The messy part is that our complex humanity is what makes us interesting, and the personal relationships we feel we have formed with the bloggers we read is WHY we want to hear what they have to say. So yes, it's tricky.
But I still land on "if my user expects X, is that what they're getting?"
So, with a political blog, I expect discussion of politics more than anything else. Business blog, business more than anything else. Food blog, food more than anything else.
My 2 cents, disregard at will. But know that it was shared with teh utmost admiration of what you've done.... In every way.
___________
Alyssa Royse
JUST CAUSE: A Web Site To Save The World
Start Her Up: A blog for Women Entrepreneurs
Sin City Siren meets your criteria
I'm sitting there now and on every single page there is political content.
http://sincitysiren.wordpress.com/2008/04/13/tax-day-anti-war-rally/
http://sincitysiren.wordpress.com/2008/04/10/happy-friday-prostest-songs...
http://sincitysiren.wordpress.com/2008/04/08/bad-medicine/
Those three are on the first page. ;-)
This may not be the type of politics you're interested in - but it is political content.
To answer your question " If my user expects X...." I can't predict what user X expects because I can't define X for every user.
X is unknown - except by the individual.
~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings
Eye of the beholder
It's all in the eye of the beholder.
And yes, of course X is unknown except by the individual, that's what makes it tough.
In any event, given that, I stand corrected on that one. But it's still something to keep an eye out for as you / we all grow. Might be an interesting question to ask the readers (again, I don't propose that I am right at all, just my opinion which is worth the paper this paperless post is printed on.)
Forums like this make informal focus groups really easy, and you guys do it really well. "What Do YOU Think is a Political Blogger?" "What are you looking for?" That makes X a little less unknown.
As brands that aggregate content, a lot rests on our ability to do so in a way that serves our users better than anyone else.
For me, protest songs do not a political blog make. Analysis of trends, explaining something, showing me how political decisions made by me, my peers and our politicians will impact the world around me - that's a political blog.
But, I never said I was right, just offering my impression.... If ANYONE can register their blog, how will you know that it is relevant to the list? Current examples not withstanding, it's something to think about.
___________
Alyssa Royse
JUST CAUSE: A Web Site To Save The World
Start Her Up: A blog for Women Entrepreneurs
Identity crisis
Well, first of all, thank you BlogHer for including me in your list!
And I understand why some people might question my "political blogger" status. I have struggled with the idea of categorizing my blog since I started it. (As you can see here http://sincitysiren.wordpress.com/2007/12/11/me-a-political-blogger-or-why-i-left-journalism-and-started-this-blog/)
I spent 8 yeras in journalism and am so tired of being constricted and labeled and put in a box. But I do understand that there are so many blogs out there that people need a way to filter everything.
So, I would say my blog is a political blog. I and my writers post about politics, the environment, activism, feminism, LGBT issues, hating Walmart, access to accurate sex ed, birth control and a lot of issues related to Las Vegas from an eco- or feminist-view. But the quirks and personality of me and my writers do come through. (And yes, sometimes that means the non-political minutia of things like Hello Kitty.) However, I would say that it is through making ourselves relatable to readers that the message really gets through. I guess for me, sometimes I just feel like I can't take myself so seriously, or politics so seriously.
But I would also say that perhaps one of the dilemnas of blogging in general is that it is a world of defining things. And I do wonder, like some other posters, what people would say to the question of "What is a political blog?"
I guess in the end, if you find what you want, then that's all that mattes.
SinCitySiren
Perfect timing
Impressively cool and comes at a time when I need to find political bloggers.
Nordette Adams is a Contributing Editor with BlogHer.org.
techPresident
Please think about making sure groups like that get wind of this. Well, I think anyway. :)
Jill
Writes Like She Talks
Phew! That's a relief...
... because when I first accessed this page, La Malkin was at the top.
Once I'd logged in to complain, that unhappy state of affairs had been corrected.
So, I like it! ;)
Hah
This comment arrived in my inbox via comment notification and I thought "gosh that sounds like Koan" - I click and yes indeedy, it is Koan.
:-)
It looks ok on the Nokia? Is that what I understood you to say?
~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings
You know me too well, it seems!
Boring and predictable, or steadfast and dependable - you decide! ;)
Anyway, yes, it looks perfect on my trusty Nokia N95.
Of course, one *might* be forgiven for thinking that the US is the only country in the world that talks politics - I went to search by country (rather than state) and was perturbed to find that I *couldn't* search by country. Obviously, there is only one country. I mean, the US is obviously the only country in the world with an election this year.
So if you'll tell me which state I live in - other than permanent confusion - then I'm good to go!
Democrat/Republican vs. Liberal/Conservative
I wonder if bloggers would be more comfortable identifying as liberal or conservative, versus the more specific Democrat or Republican?
Just a thought, as I cruise the blogs designated as "undecided."
Liz Rizzo
I blog at Everyday Goddess.
I like that suggestion a lot
I'm ok with being ID'd as a Dem, but in Ohio, no one registers by party - it's not required. And I like that. So I do feel that liberal or left of center better describes my political - i'm not really a "party girl" even though I'm part of an effort to have a formal party in my small town.
But I would be amenable to "liberal" versus "Democrat." I usually describe people as they relate to the center - so, center, left of center, right of center and so on.
Jill
Writes Like She Talks
Cool
I found it a bit hard to navigate/search by state, interface-wise.
Why is Pandagon listed as being in NC?
Hard how?
Good catch on the Pandagon blog - we worked from a spreadsheet created long ago, when Amanda Marcotte was focusing in NC... remember all of that Edwards stuff?
But you say it was hard to navigate by state? Can you explain what was difficult? It will help us improve the sort functionality.
~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings
This is a great idea!
Thanks for such a great tool. Gloria Feldt is going to be using it on her website, GloriaFeldt.com soon. :)
Nice idea
I find the liberal or conservative thing a better option as I'm sure there are a lot of people, at least people close to my age, committed to the issues rather than the party.
This is a very cool idea.
cooper