Dale is excited that the Tories are going to launch – wait for it – a blog. Anyone will be able to leave comments, and according to Dale there will be “no Stalinist approach to moderation”.
Platform 10 was the last dire CCHQ encouraged Cameroon attempt to take on the more grassroots and independent ConservativeHome. Platform 10 is a flop, whereas ConservativeHome is an influential success. Now they are going to try again and launch a Conservative Party blog. It will probably flop as well. People don’t want to read anodyne, antiseptic, party-line stuff, turgid and insulting to the intelligence.
The Tories don’t need a party blog, in fact arguably the party has been strengthened by the open and honest critical discussion on the ConservativeHome pages over the last few years.
An official and lightly moderated blog just won’t happen – it is guaranteed to not happen because it is impossible. The comments will be over-run by agent provocateurs, nutters and political opponents. The contents scanned by hostile journalists for anything that can be used against the party. The LibDems use private discussion forums behind password-protected walls for members. (Passwords are not that hard to obtain, nothing interesting to report.)
Speaking to Tim Montgomerie in the U.S. last night, he pointed out that if the Tories are, as some suggest, trying to undercut the influence of ConservativeHome, it won’t work. Blogs are not the same as newspapers – a new blog does not take away traffic from a rival, it just grows the blogosphere.
Guido has oft said that group blogs are difficult to make work. Readers like to know what they are getting, multiple contributors of different hues and quality just take too much time to sift. A blog needs a strong personality – witness the dozens of good contributors to the Telegraph’s political blogs – with a combined traffic less than Guido.
They are asking you to email suggestions for a name for the blog. Well there was a famous party information source last seen around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Click here to ask CCHQ to call the new blog “Pravda”.
