The Guardian Election blog is no more and with it many political bloggers will lose a handy source of traffic. Here at www.order-order.com Guido was getting about 3000 hits a day and post-election Guido is seeing 1000 hits a day. Partly as a result of less interest in events post-election and partly due to reduced frequency of posts. Guido is also suffering post-election fatigue and the continuous sleep deprivation that follows the birth of baby Miss Fawkes. The collaborative effort that was www.ReturningOfficer.com is also in hibernation until the next election.

Guido plans to post daily but not five-times-a-day as before. Those of you who don’t subscribe to the syndicated feed are recommended to do so – it saves checking the blog. Guido uses Bloglines to monitor all the blogs he reads, it saves clicking from site-to-site amongst favourites, only to find them not updated and valuable click time wasted. Click on the little [SUB-BLOGLINES] subscription button in the right-hand column half way down and follow the instructions – it makes life easier.

Apparently Guido won the Guardian’s Political Commentary Blog of the Year Award – for what its worth. My view of the Guardian is that they have been trying to feed vampirically off the buzz and energy of the Blogosphere for whatever edgy cachet it has, to “get down with the blogs”. Despite loathing its public-sector politics, Guido admits it is the most web-savvy serious paper, but whilst many of my fellow bloggers are seduced by the hope of a mention on the Guardian’s website and the traffic it brings, personally I’m not really impressed by the Dead-Tree-Press hacks who attempt to patronise bloggers. Unlike bloggers, journalists may have a sub-editor, but not a proper job. Admittedly bloggers failed during the election to claim any scalps, unlike in the US where they got Dan Rather and helped destroy Kerry. Hopefully Guido will do better in the next parliament…