gatewatching

This is a quick return post after a long and excellent adventure for me, which took in the “Politics and Web 2.0″ conference at Royal Holloway in the UK, and the Future of Journalism conference down in Sydney last week. I’ll post more extensively on these a little later on, but for now I’m going through Google reader, checking what I’ve missed blog-wise since I’ve been away.

It occurs to me as I’m reading through the RSS feed that many of the blogs I read closely are not necessarily on the A-list of Australian blogs - the kind that get most of MSM attention and in-links, and which are talked about more extensively at the kinds of conferences and conventions I’ve been attending.

I’m aware I have to stop plugging Cairnsblog as an example of the kind of tenacious local blogging that I hope has a big future, so I’ll shut up about that. Another example of a consistently well-written, considered, original must-read blog for mine, though, is Andrew Elder’s Politically Homeless.

Elder and I probably share very few political opinions, but I can recognise that he does a great job - from the perspective of concerned conservatism - of taking apart the glib opinions of Liberal Party politicians and associated right-wingers that tend to get printed. Elder’s work is an example of Axel calls gatewatching, but perhaps we could call it “gatewatching plus”, because he adds so much value to the pieces his blog links to. Elder is like a rigorous physician, using poorly considered op-eds as telling clinical signs in his efforts to diagnose the ills of right-of-centre politics. His pieces are merciless in pointing out errors of logic or fact, and yet he never stoops to simply recycling broadsheet talking-points, knee-jerk opposition, engaging in silly snark-wars with other bloggers, or dumb dog-whistling.

If you want a sense of how good Elder’s writing and analysis can be, try this post on the Young Lib’s campaign to out “left-wing bias” on university campuses. As usual, this is a thorough, stylish and nuanced airing of home truths here. I hope it shows why I’m always happy to see a new post on Elder’s blog.

Even though I (and no doubt some readers) think his blog is excellent, Technorati, Google Pagerank and Alexa all measure the blog’s impact and influence as modest, there often aren’t too many comments, and there’s no immediate reason to think that a huge readership is concealed by all this (as always, I’m willing to be presented with countervailing information here).

Is this because Elder’s posts are often long and relatively dense? Is it because he doesn’t fit easily into the Australian blogosphere’s networks of political like-mindedness? Is it because he doesn’t either pick blogosphere fights, or play the game of link-swapping and influence-building? Or is his area of interest just too narrow for anyone except the most hardened political junkie?

Anyway, I’d love to hear in comments about any other blogs that readers know about which are high-quality, but off the A-list. Let us know about blogs that you read with glee, but which don’t seem to sneak into broadsheet write-ups of the brave new blogosphere.