Scottish Roundup

Don’t forget that the deadline for nominations for the Scotblogs Awards is at 6pm on Wednesday 13 January. So if you have been meaning to nominate some blogs and have been putting it off, don’t delay!

So far, 104 blogs have been nominated — but it would be great to have even more to include on the list.

A number of queries have come in regarding categories. Most commonly, people are asking questions like, “will there be an award for the best blog post as opposed to the best blog overall?”

Sadly, the way I have designed the awards will make this difficult. There will be just one round of voting, and from these overall results winners of the individual categories will be decided. It was not my plan to run several polls in parallel.

However, there have been a lot of questions of this nature so it looks as though there could be enough demand for extra, more specific awards to be held in the near future. If these first awards are a success, it will be worth looking into running a second set in, say, February.

Apart from that, I have been keeping track of all your suggestions, and which blogs might fit into suggested categories, as I have been going along.

I don’t think it would make sense to include categories which fewer than five blogs fit into. As such, I have made the categories fairly broad, grouping together similar subject areas.

So, as things stand, here are the categories there will be:

• Overall
• Newcomer
• Political
• Non-political / personal
• SNP / Pro-independence
• Music
• Science / Nature / Environment
• Labour
• Hyperlocal
• Photography
• Sport
• Journalist / Mainstream media
• Lib Dem
• Politician (including PPCs)

(The Newcomer category will contain any blogs which began during 2009.)

On the cusp of being included as a category, but not quite yet reaching the threshold, are:

• Food and drink
• Libertarian
• Politically non-aligned
• Education
• Conservative

Other categories (such as entertainment including film and television, craft, technology and other political parties) currently have fewer than three blogs nominated so far! Potentially entertainment could be merged with music.

Hopefully this will give you all an idea of which sorts of blogs have been under-represented in the nominations so far.

If I have the time tomorrow, I may give a list-minute preview of the blogs that have been nominated, to give you a chance to put forward anything that has been missed. I would do it tonight but I am too tired just now unfortunately!

But just now, the message is: if in doubt, nominate it anyway. You may be surprised at some of the blogs that are currently omitted.

To nominate a blog, it’s really easy. Simply use the form on the right, and label it with “AWARDS” or something like that so that I know for sure that it is a nomination for the awards rather than the weekly roundup. Alternatively, simply email us at scottishroundup+awards@gmail.com. Or get in touch via Twitter @ScottishRoundup. Thanks!