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Online Journalism News

Westmonster politics blog is first launch for Messy Media

Posted: 24/09/07 By: Laura Oliver
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New blog publisher Messy Media has unveiled its first title - a political blog called Westmonster.

The site, which is edited by Sadie Smith, promises 'an insider's irreverent view' of British politics and has begun by blogging directly from the Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth.

A release from Messy Media, which was launched earlier this month by journalists Andrew Levy and Lloyd Shepherd, claims that Westmonster will show "it is possible to produce well-written, professionally-executed media at very low cost thanks to the explosion in online publishing tools."

"We believe there's a yawning gap in British political coverage, between the established media, which have fallen into the 'us-and-them' trap, and the partisan political blogs like Iain Dale's Diary and Guido Fawkes," said Shepherd, who has worked for Guardian Unlimited and Yahoo!.

"We want to launch into that gap, combining the professional aspirations of the established media with the speed, openness and smarts of the bloggers."

In a blog post today Shepherd said response to Westmonster had been positive, though fellow political blogger Guido Fawkes had sent 'an oddly threatening email' regarding the new site.

In the same vein, Telegraph.co.uk has launched political blog Brassneck, which, according to Shane Richmond, communities editor of Telegraph.co.uk, is the second of a 'stable' of political blogs to be revealed by the newspaper's website this autumn.

Brassneck, which is fronted by Mick Fealty, creator of the Northern Irish political blog Slugger O'Toole, will eventually form part of the website's politics channel along with several as yet unreleased blogs.

"It's often overlooked but our blogs are designed to work in a 'nested' fashion," writes Richmond.

"You can treat all our blogs as a single blog, you can get an entire category as a multi-author blog or you can focus on an individual. When they are all live these blogs will make a very strong package."