South Africa's Mail and Guardian launches Comment-is-Free-style editorial blog

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South Africa's Mail and Guardian newspaper has launched an editorial blog inspired by the Guardian's Comment is Free .

Developers of Thought Leaders describe it as a 'hybrid blog-media product' written by the paper's journalists, alongside established writers and significant members of South African society.

"We have tremendous respect for the Guardian Unlimited and believe it is a world-leader and trend-setter in the global online publishing industry," Matthew Buckland, general manager of new media with Mail and Guardian, told Journalism.co.uk.

"That is why we drew inspiration and modelled Thought Leader on their site, but for our own context."

Unlike other blog products run by the paper - aggregator amatomu.com and blogging platform amagama.com - all posts to Thought Leaders are edited by the paper's online editor, Riaan Wolmarans.

Readers have the opportunity to comment on issues raised by contributors and rate posts.

"There are good reasons why media and its gate keeping functions have existed for years - to ensure quality," added Buckland.

"At the same time however, blogging brings something else to the publishing mix: perhaps a more conversational style of writing, and strong, often acerbic opinion, and ability to tackle niche subjects not otherwise covered by big media. As a hybrid blog-editorial site, we are hoping Thought Leader provides the best of both mediums.

"We edit the posts just like we edit copy for the main site, because the content appears under our publishing brand. Therefore we are liable and associated with the content. We also need to ensure we keep a high standard."

Like Comment is Free, the blog has an approved list of contributors . Journalists, academics, established bloggers and those with a significant interest in IT make up the 40 or so already signed up.

Buckland hopes to have 300 approved contributors associated with the site in the next few weeks to blog on a diverse range of topics.

"There is always a bit of a bias towards IT topics or media topics at the outset, as this is our immediate network and the constituency that would embrace the concept. But the idea is to look at a range of topics and authors, rather than focus only on politics and news commentary," he added.