It was five years ago today that I started this blog. I started writing on this site as a tool to compliment my nomination campaign in Kingston prior to the 2004 general election. I wasn’t successful in that nomination campaign as my blog at the time was read by a handful of people nationally rather than a handful of people locally. But really, nominations are won by signing up new members and turning them out to the meeting. Who knew? Oh, the things I’ve learned in the last five years!
This blog grew from that nomination battle to cover the Conservative leadership race, to three general elections, a number of by-elections and all of the drama in between. Political blogging was a relatively new phenomenon five years ago and I was lucky to be an early adopter of a medium that would become useful in the 2006 election and a misplaced media obsession in 2008. In late 2004, I put together a site called Blogging Tories that brought together like-minded bloggers to form a community around right-of-centre politics. I remember that the earliest version of the blogroll had only five blogs on it! Now the blogroll spans 300 members and is read by tens of thousands of people daily.
As the practice of self-publishing continues and evolves into new formats beyond the blog into micro-blogging formats such as twitter, more people will become involved in the national political conversation. Blogging has also evolved on different platforms such as Facebook with Facebook Notes and micro-blogging with Facebook status updates. Politics is a social and new media has created the potential for the dialogue between political practitioners and political stakeholders to become a real two-way conversation rather than a disjointed series of action and reaction separated by long periods of time spanning from days to weeks.
I’ve enjoyed blogging as it provides an outlet for my views and lets me connect with Canadians who either share or don’t share my perspective. I’ve met a lot of interesting people online and offline as a result of this blog and I’ve found that most have been sincere and genuine in their respective views on how to make Canada a better place for Canadians, no matter their prescription for that outcome.
I look forward to continuing our conversation.
Stephen Taylor is a scientist, political analyst and a blogger. Taylor writes here regularly and is the founder of bloggingtories.ca. Taylor has contributed to Macleans, CTV, talk radio and has been a featured speaker on new media at numerous events including the Western Standard Cruise and the Forum for Public Policy. In December 2008, Taylor organized Rally for Canada, a series of rallies held coast-to-coast to protest the proposed coalition government.
January 17th, 2009 at 12:26 am
Congratulations on five years of blogging. It's been an interesting ride.
January 17th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Happy anniversary and congratulation. On your blog you at least respect other peoples point of view even if you happen to disagree with them,unlike some other some other places. You don't insult them. Congratulation again!
January 17th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Happy Anniversary, Stephen. Here's to another productive five years.
I have a question, though: what do you mean by “a misplaced media obsession in 2008″? Maybe it could be the subject of a future post? Or maybe I'm suffering from brain freeze?
January 17th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Congratulations Stephen.
Blogging has come a long way in that time. No doubt your success of joining many similar minds with Blogging Tories has lead to much broader engagement in the political process.
January 17th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
The pouncing on past blog posts of candidates. Also, bizarrely, the msm was an early adopter of twitter for Canada thinking it would explode. Usually the media catches up to trends, rather than goes about setting them.
January 17th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Stephen;
Sincere congrats from this Yank. I've came around to trusting you to be a much better pundit than the paid ones!
Keep taking names to kick butt!
Josef in the States
January 18th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Congrats! We know how much it takes. And please keep it up. You are one of our regular blog stops.
January 19th, 2009 at 6:11 am
Congratulations on five great years. I came to your blog (the first blog I had ever visited) after reading an interest
tidbit from it from the Post and got hooked on the blogging, but more importantly, got hooked on politics.
I think one of the most important things that blogs do is allow people to engage in the political process and let their voices and viewpoints be heard.
Keep fighting the good fight!
January 19th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Stephen
I like your blog and appreciate the effort. You are truly a prince on the political blogging front ,what with your thoughtful input and tasteful style.
Congratulations and best wishes.
January 19th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Congrats on the anniversary!
Be sure to keep it up – disagree or agree, I've appreciated reading what you have to write. It's clear a lot of effort goes into every post.
January 20th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Stephen, your blog is a valuable contribution to democracy something that is missing in the party you support. I hope you keep it gong when the Tories are in opposition sooner than later.
January 21st, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Congratulations, Stephen! Five years ago I didn't even know what a blog was! Now, I'm an inveterate commenter on a number of blogs, yours being one of my favourites. It's a storehouse of well-researched information — much of it not available through the Canadian media.
Thanks for your generous contribution to Canada's “public square.” Your blog is indispensible to our country's ongoing–and open–political conversation.
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:50 am
Congratulations, Stephen! Five years ago I didn't even know what a blog was! Now, I'm an inveterate commenter on a number of blogs, yours being one of my favourites. It's a storehouse of well-researched information — much of it not available through the Canadian media.
Thanks for your generous contribution to Canada's “public square.” Your blog is indispensible to our country's ongoing–and open–political conversation.