Progressive Bloggers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Progressive Bloggers is the name of an affiated group of Canadian bloggers who come from the centre, centre-left and left-wing of the political spectrum. Progressive Bloggers primarily maintain their own blogs, whose content is then aggregated on the main Progressive Bloggers website.
Progressive Bloggers was created in May, 2005 by Wayne Chu from Canadian political website freethought.ca with the input of bloggers Scott Tribe, Jason Cherniak, Bart Ramson, Jonathan Ross, Sean McDonald, Sheamus Murphy, and others.
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[edit] Political approach
The central political belief of the Progressive Bloggers is that Canadian society should move in a progressive direction. The fundamental Canadian values they believe should be strengthened and enhanced in this way include "the importance of the environment, the need to preserve Canada’s social programs and its multicultural mosaic." Equal rights and a united country are also vital to Progressive Bloggers, and on their blogs you will find many posts "on why national unity is important and on why there are worse problems than letting two people who love each other marry." (From About Us on the Progressive Bloggers website).
Progressive Bloggers has been endorsed by Vive le Canada, the Canadian political sovereignty organization.
It should be noted that feminism has been identified as a "peripheral issue" to Progressive Bloggers.
[edit] Qualification for membership
Progressive Bloggers currently has over 230 members. Membership is open to any Canadian-themed progressive blog anywhere in the world. It is not affiliated with any political parties and attract people from different political views, including some members of the conservative Blogging Tories. Though Progressive Bloggers does include prominent Canadians such as Matthew Good, all members are treated equally and operate under the same rules.
Application for membership is through the Affiliates section of the Progressive Bloggers website. Moderators review all applying blogs to make sure they will generally fit with the political mission statement of the Progressive Bloggers. Membership can be rejected or revoked if the blogger in question acts in bad faith, such as berating commentors on his or her blog, or falsifying their comments. However, membership rarely is actually revoked, even when these rules are broken.
As noted, unlike sites like Daily Kos where all self-identified progressives can join, the moderators of Progressive Bloggers deny membership to certain applicants. This has led some members to question whether this practice serves to favour a particular political orientation and/or approach to politics. For example, feminist bloggers, along with others, have questioned the practice of rejecting blogs that emphasize the so-called personal over formal politics. While active members have called for a change in membership criterion, these calls have yet to be fully addressed by the moderators.
[edit] Canadian blogosphere context
Main article: Canadian blogosphere.
Weblogs of a political nature have a high visibility in Canada, perhaps more so than other countries. The former Prime Minister kept a high-profile blog during his campaign for leadership of the Liberal Party. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Monte Solberg keeps a widely read blog, as does former advisor to Jean Chrétien, Warren Kinsella. The contents of political blogs have been used to both defend and attack politicians in Parliament. Canadian comedian and icon Rick Mercer also keeps a blog that frequently pokes fun at Canadian politicians.
After developing a rich ecosystem of individual bloggers in the early 2000s, the Canadian blogosphere began to organize itself into larger groupings based on political philosophy (left vs. right), political party (Liberal, Green, New Democratic Party, Conservative) and geographical location (province or city). Membership in several groups is common, and there is considerable overlap between membership in the Progressive Bloggers and other blogging groups, especially geographical ones.
There is a friendly rivalry between the Progressive Bloggers and the other large groupings of Canadian bloggers, especially the Blogging Tories. Blogging Tories who consider themselves Red Tories share many views in common with the Progressive Bloggers and some do have memberships in both groups, though they are few in number. The Progressive Bloggers - Blogging Tories split is thought to reflect the larger division of political opinion in Canada, according to national media "blogging expert" Jim Elve.
Monitoring the Progressive Bloggers website can give a quick snapshot of what political developments and world issues are considered important in the Canadian blogosphere, as well as what the range of opinion is on these issues. Journalist Antonia Zerbisias uses Progressive Bloggers to tell Toronto Star readers what political happenings have engaged Canadians' attention (e.g., 1, 2).
[edit] Website technology
Progressive Bloggers uses custom designed software. In addition to aggregating member posts via web syndication, this software allows users to vote on which Progressive Blogger posts are currently the best. These posts are then promoted to prominence on the website. Commenting is allowed on posts, with the ability of users to rank and moderate the comments of others.
The Progressive Bloggers website also has the capability for user diaries to be maintained directly on the website allowing users who do not necessarily have their own individual blog to post on the site.
[edit] Trivia
Senator Anne Cools entered Progressive Bloggers member The Dominion Daily Weblog during a constitutional debate.
Member Buckets of Grewal was accused by members of the Conservative Party of Canada of being part of an undercover Liberal Party astroturfing campaign for his exhaustive forensic coverage of the Gurmant Grewal "taping" fiasco. This was denied by Steven MacKinnon, national director of the Liberal Party.
Member Jason Cherniak was recently on the National Executive of the Young Liberals of Canada and co-chaired the YLC Convention in 2005.
Member Centrerion Canadian Politics is Google's #1 result for both 'moderate analysis,' ahead of 25 million other sites, and for 'centrist commentary', ahead of a half million other sites.
Member Crystal LeBlanc received 5,905 votes in the 2004 federal election as NDP candidate in the riding of Ottawa—Orléans.
Member Jim Bobby writes his blog entirely in Appalachian English.
Green Bloggers founder Craig Cantin is currently a member.
