Best Blog Posts ’09 is up and running

For four years now (ages in blogosphere terms) Club Troppo and On Line Opinion have sponsored a showcase of Australian independent blogging, which we call Best Blog Posts of <year>’.

With Christmas fast approaching, the time has come to launch ‘Best Blog Posts of 09’. On Line Opinion will publish the best 40 or so nominated posts over the course of January.

This year the judging panel includes Ken Parish and Nicholas Gruen of Club Troppo, Helen ‘skepticlawyer’ Dale, media studies academic Jason Wilson, and On Line Opinion’s Graham Young and Susan Prior.

The objective, as always, is to gather some of the best blog writing in one place. It’s a showcase or anthology rather than a contest.  There will be no “Best Blog Post of 09” award, just publication over the festive season of 40 of the best as nominated by readers and “culled” to a manageable number by our judging panel.

Posts will enter the pool by two channels. First of all, to ensure there is a decent sample, our judging panel will feel free to make nominations from our own subjective memories of excellent blogging.  Unfortunately, our memories may not be as compendious as in past years because we haven’t been running the regular Missing Link feature over the last year, which makes the second nomination channel even more important previously. The second channel is you. We would like you to nominate your own favourite posts. This includes posts youve read and posts youve written.

As far as self-nomination goes, in case there are writers out there who are inhibited by modesty, keep in mind that there is no winner, so we are not asking you to claim that any post of yours is the best post of 2009. We just want to exhibit your wares. Please make our lives easier by supplying a list of the three posts of which you are most proud.

You can make your nominations in three ways:

1. List them in the comments thread to the call for nominations post here at Club Troppo;

2. Send it to On Line Opinion submissions@onlineopinion.com.au

3. Send an email to: ken dot parish at cdu dot edu dot au .

Rules:

1. The authors must be self-identified Australian bloggers (though they may reside abroad).

2. The posts should generally be from independent blogs, not MSM offshoots.

3. The posts may be on any topic, from politics, science, and the humanities, to sport and cooking. Reviews of books, films and shows are also very welcome. The only other proviso is that posts should be of interest to a general audience rather than be purely for aficionados. They should also desirably be on topics which retain some degree of current interest.  Some topics, especially political ones, tend to have a very short shelf life indeed.

4. Posts should generally be of the longer, essay variety, as opposed to the short, link-and-comment variety, or posts that are three-quarters quotation. Preferred length is under 1,000 words but this is not a strict requirement and would not stop us picking a post that was clearly of a sufficiently high quality or interest.

5. One individual may make up to six nominations, but not more than three for a single author.

We will endeavour to contact the authors, to give them an opportunity to decline or to make minor amendments if they wish.

The closing date for nominations is Monday 21 December.