Travel blog awards - a question of community
Posted by Caitlin on 03 Feb 2008 at 01:18 pm | Tagged as: Blogging, Events, Trends
Did you vote in the 2008 Bloggies? Voting has now closed and the winners will be announced on 10 March.
The Bloggies have been going for eight years now and they are very prestigious. Winning a Bloggie is not only a great honour, it would undoubtedly would bring a big boost in audience for any website.
However, I can tell you already that a travel blog will not win any of the 30 categories. The reason I am so certain is that there is not a single travel blog among the 180 finalists. By contrast, there are 11 food blogs among the finalists, some of them up for multiple awards.
This made me wonder… does this mean there are not very many good travel blogs out there? Or does it mean that the people who vote in the Bloggies are not much interested in travel blogs? And if it is the latter, then can that be changed? One impediment is obviously that there is no category specifically for travel blogs but that should not be an insurmountable hurdle - food blogs by contrast had the advantage of a dedicated category but they also made the finals in “best Australian or New Zealand weblog”, “best European weblog”, “best photography of a weblog” and “best writing of a weblog”.
I emailed Nikolai Nolan, whose contact details are on the Bloggies website. This is what he had to say:
“To my knowledge, no travel-focused blogs made the finals this year, and there haven’t been many in previous years. I’m not one to judge whether travel weblogs don’t deserve to be nominated, or if they’re just not well-known enough or liked enough by the audience who votes for the Bloggies. A travel category has been requested many times, and if I decide to drop a category next year there’s a good chance Best Travel Weblog will replace it.”
I then asked the question on the Travelwriters.com forum. I got an incredible response and it opened my eyes to just how many terrific travel blogs are out there. Many of the blogs had blog rolls or linked to other blogs so I have had a happy few days exploring the travel blogosphere. The problem is definitely not lack of talent.
The Bloggies may or may not introduce a travel blog category at some point in the future. I don’t think we should waste time worrying about that because it’s outside our control. However, it is certainly within our power to nominate travel blogs for next year’s awards in existing categories. I will post here when the time comes.
The other thing I am keen to do is try to build more of a sense of community among travel bloggers. I think the reason food blogs are so well represented is because the food blogging community is well established and well organised - they read each other’s blogs, leave comments for each other, link to each other, and my sense is they probably nominate each other for awards. They realise that they are allies and even friends, and not rivals. That is something that is totally within our power.
We should also support initiatives like the Travvies, a new awards scheme specifically for travel blogs. It’s not as big as the Bloggies yet but it’s a start. There was a great line-up of winners and while I’m sure some very good blogs missed out, it was sad to see so much bitching about the process and the rules. Enough with the whining, let’s get behind it!
Travel writer and blogger Christopher Elliott has also written about the lack of respect given to travel blogs. He likens it to the situation facing animated films before 2001, when it got its own category in the Oscars for the first time. He believes that a credible, impartial organisation needs to be back a set of awards for the travel blogging sector.
Since starting the Travelwriters.com thread, I have added about a dozen travel blogs to my RSS feed reader* (explanation below for the non-techie among you). I plan to make more of an effort to support my fellow travel bloggers. If the universe reciprocates then that’s fantastic; if not, well that’s okay too as I’ll still be entertained, edified and provoked by all the great travel writing out there.
Lest you think that all this is a ruse to prompt my readers to vote for me in next year’s Bloggies, it’s not. I just hope you vote for a travel blog, any travel blog. In order to avoid simply posting a massive list of about 100 blogs, I am going to drip feed this over multiple posts. Hopefully you will find something of interest, so stay tuned!
* RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It basically means you will be notified of new content on your favourite blogs and sites, without having to go to the home page to check. All you need to do is register for an RSS reader such as Google Reader, My Yahoo! or Bloglines (or choose one from this longer list) in the same way you would register for a free email account. Then tell the RSS reader the URLs for the blogs you would like to subscribe to. Sometimes it will come up with more than one feed but usually if you select the top one, then that will work fine. Many blogs will also have a separate feed for comments, which can be nice if you like the community aspect.
Thank you so much for raising this issue and pushing the cause for all travel bloggers. I will certainly be voting this year for both the Bloggies and Travvies.
I also agree that travel bloggers need to bandy together, not just to promote our own work, but to encourage and support each other, and ultimately raise the profile of our genre. Perhaps then we will be given more than just a passing nod at next year’s Bloggies. Maybe we’ll even get our own category! We can only dream.
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Hi caitlin
I’m with you on this one - I also previously mailed Nikolai and he replied:
“I limit the categories to 30, so the categories are selected based on the trends of weblog topics and what people request most. Fashion and Art edged out Travel in number of requests from last year. If a spot opens up next year, it’s very likely Travel will be added.”
Could this be a campaign in the making?
Great idea! If anyone would like a travel category in the Bloggies you can email Nikolai on nikolai AT nolan DOT net (contact details taken from the Bloggies website).
Also so much for all the winners in the Travel blog awards.I really appreciate them.
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