While far too many keystrokes have already been used up on the controversy surrounding My Blahg, the more important longer-term development appears to be the NDP's announcement that it's in the process of setting up a blogroll of its own. In principle, the idea sounds like a good one - but there may be some significant warning signs as to the implementation.
Part of the problem is that the announcement itself seems to have come out more by accident than as a result of any strong effort to promote the project. While I'd rather have seen the NDP unveil it directly than leak it to a blogger, there's no reason why anything intended to be an important party project should be made public as an afterthought in Anne McGrath's letter to Ed Morgan.
What's worse, the concept that the blogroll is to serve as some response to Morgan's concerns may also offer a hint as to what the blogroll will look like.
I should note that others are understandably worried that an official party blogroll will result in controversial posts like Robert's being directly linked to the NDP. But my concern is the converse: that the blogroll will instead go too far in trying to suppress anything that could possibly be controversial, and thus consist solely of blogs where party insiders insert a couple of "I think"s into NDP press releases with no place for public comment.
That would definitely avoid any McClelland-type meltdowns. But it would also set back any effort to turn the NDP's website and/or blogroll into anything more than another top-down conduit for the same information which readers can easily get through the NDP's e-mail list.
That said, there's still plenty of reason for optimism at the news that there's a blogroll in the works. Now, the need is for those of us who support the NDP to make sure that the right balance is struck between encouraging the creativity of Dippers across the country and staying within the boundaries of reasonable discourse.
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