THIS WEEK the eurosphere has been particularly self-obsessed. It’s not our fault, though! A big-shot PR firm came rolling into town and released a ranking of the top euroblogs. There then followed a furious, self-indulgent debate across the blogosphere (and twittersphere – hashtag: #bbs10) about the report.
I was particularly critical of the report – but there were also posts by Jon Worth, Blogactiv, Mathew Lowry, Open Europe,The European Citizen, Bit More Complicated, Lacomeuropeenne (FR), Ralf Grahn, and many more. Much of the coverage was critical - focusing on the fact that the report imported a methodology designed for the US blogosphere and excluded all non-English EU blogs.
UPDATE: Ralf Grahn has (as usual) provided an excellent and comprehensive round-up of the entire Waggener Edstrom debate in the eurosphere.
We conducted our own quick poll this week. The results were (unfortunately) completely inconclusive – everybody liked different blogs! This says a lot about the health of the EU blogosphere if no two Bloggingportal editors had the same list of top blogs. Three blogs, however, did manage to tie for first place (in no particular order):
(1st place – Editors’ Choice) L’Europe en Blogs
(1st place - Editors’ Choice) Grahnlaw
(1st place- Editors’ Choice) Writing for (y)EU
Well done to all of them! I’ve collected the rest of the blogs nominated by our editors in a poll below – so please vote here for your 5 favourite! Next Sunday, we’ll announce the results of the Readers’ choice.
THE CLOAK AND DAGGER POLITICS OF MEPS
Christian Engström, a Swedish Pirate Party MEP, has blogged about walking out of an ACTA meeting (concerning a controversial piece of legislation on intellectual property rights) because he was told the contents of the meeting were to be hidden from the public. I’ve given up waiting for the minutes of the SWIFT meeting (concerning anti-terrorism legislation) to ever be released – likewise with the EAS meeting minutes (about the new EU diplomatic corps). Not that committee minutes would be particularly exciting – but the fact that MEPs won’t release them (and that none of these meetings were broadcast by webcam) highlights the opaque nature of European Parliamentary politics when anything controversial is at stake.
These secretive committee meetings (ACTA, SWIFT and the EAS) come at the same time as a report by Danish MEP and former journalist Morten Lokkegaard, who tells us that “access to information for citizens and communication between policy-makers and voters are central elements” to democracy. British MEP Mary Honeyball writes that “many [MEPs] are desperate for our, i.e. EU and Euro Parl, news to become mainstream and raised out of its current Euro ghetto.” If that’s the case, perhaps you could start by webcasting all committee meetings – not just the uncontroversial ones.
BETTER KNOW A EUROBLOG (#BKAEB)
In honour of @mteu’s suggestion for a #followfriday for euroblogs – this week’s #BKAEB is James Stevens, an EU native in D.C. working for PR firm Fleishman-Hillard. He promises to offer us an insight into US politics from an EU-perspective – and tells us that Washington isn’t always doing things bigger and better: “Brussels could do with some of Washington and Washington could do with some of Brussels.”
MULTI-LINGUAL FILM COMPETITION
Can you speak more than one language? Do you own a camera? Can you make a multi-lingual swords-and-sandals epic about the history of Rome starring sock-puppets? If you satisfy two out of those three criteria – then consider applying for Global Voices’ European multilingualism video competition.
