Blog off during the election...

What is the current fascination with blogs on news websites?

I understand the elections - both national and local - can be difficult to cover; finding new lines, anything interesting from the dull manifesto, recycling old stories for lists of nominees etc, but is there really a need for every reporter/editor/cleaner/tea lady at a newspaper to 'blog' on the matter?

Even worse, they insist on calling them blogs, present them in the most basic manner and simply recycle what they read on a Sky News blog that morning, or worse, one of the BBC's awful, awful election space-fillers.

I'm racking my brain to think of where this proliferation of political expertise has come from and the only conclusion I can come up with is that, for local and regional rags in particular, this is the first time they have had this wonderful tool called 't'interweb' to use during a general election.

And so, while scouring the land for ways to make themselves feel like they are covering the main event (when in fact we all know that regionals should'nt be interested in "Call Me Dave" and "Hardy Gordon"), they have stumbled across blogs by the likes of Adam B at Sky and Nick R at the Beeb and decided to copy it.

Yet another clutch at the ever-fruitful straws provided by the internet by an industry reaching further and further into the abyss of cutbacks and slowly but surely disappearing up its own arse in a bid to claim it is "innovating" to any foolhardy MD who will listen.

Anyway, I'm going to post another few cracking mistakes that perhaps the next political reporter wannabe can have a look at sorting before attempting to wax lyrical to me about his theory on the Tories' strategy... Check 'em out shortly.