Slugger O'Toole

Last updated

Slugger O'Toole is a weblog started in June 2002 by political analyst Mick Fealty. It began life as Letter to Slugger O'Toole, focused primarily on news and comment about Northern Ireland. From the beginning it has drawn its readership from a wide spectrum of opinion [1] both inside and outside Northern Ireland.

Contents

'Slugger' has developed a reputation as 'the watering hole of the political class in Northern Ireland.'[ citation needed ] It draws its regular contributors from a wide range of political perspectives including contributors with links to all of the main political parties as well as a number of 'independents'. Research commissioned in the summer of 2008 by Stratagem in association with ComRes revealed that 96% of the members of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLAs) read the blog "regularly" or "occasionally".

As of 2023 the site has published over 40,000 posts and over one and a half million comments on the site. Each month the site gets about 70,000 readers. The site is run by volunteers and has never had any paid staff. The site is reader supported and does not get any funding.

Play the ball, not the man/woman rule

The site has a fairly rigorous comments policy in which personal abuse is discouraged and commenters are urged to 'play the ball and not the man' - a refrain that has since been popularised in the wider Irish political discourse. [2] The phrase refers to Ad hominem argument. The phrase was first suggested by early commentator Ian Parsley in 2003.

Origins of the name

The name of the blog was originally a reference to a sockpuppet character invented by Tim Murphy of New York, on an old CNN community called Peace in Northern Ireland. The name of the character is in turn a reference to the traditional Irish song "The Irish Rover", best known from a version recorded as a collaboration between The Pogues and The Dubliners. The relevant line is: There was Slugger O'Toole who was drunk as a rule. Murphy's "character" was invariably drunk on Bushmills, never listened to reasoned argument, and usually espoused strong loyalist politics, which often caught the unwary or recently arrived off guard.

The idea of the Letter was to try to explain the complexities of Northern Ireland, slowly, regularly and in short bite-size pieces over a long, long period of time. Just like trying to explain something complex to a drunk man.

However, the Letter part was dropped when the blog moved from its old blogspot venue and radically re-designed and built on a different blog platform. [3]

The Slugger O'Toole Political Awards

In the autumn of 2008, Slugger O'Toole announced a series of political awards. With the stated intention of 'promoting a conversational politics', the awards sought to identify good examples of democratic practice.

The inaugural awards were presented in Belfast on 7 October 2008 with comedian Tim McGarry as compere.

The 2008 winners were as follows:

The 2009 awards were scheduled to take place on 24 November at The Black Box in Belfast. The 2010 awards were going to see a change in format. [4]

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blog</span> Discussion or informational site published on the internet

A blog is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. In the 2000s, blogs were often the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject or topic. In the 2010s, "multi-author blogs" (MABs) emerged, featuring the writing of multiple authors and sometimes professionally edited. MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups, and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other "microblogging" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into the news media. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

David Thomas Kerr is a Northern Irish politician who is the Chairman of the UK-wide Third Way.

Boing Boing is a website, first established as a zine in 1988, later becoming a group blog. Common topics and themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney, and left-wing politics. It twice won the Bloggies for Weblog of the Year, in 2004 and 2005. The editors are Mark Frauenfelder, David Pescovitz, Carla Sinclair, and Rob Beschizza, and the publisher is Jason Weisberger.

Following a crackdown on Iranian media beginning in 2000, many Iranians turned to weblogging to provide and find political news. The first Persian language blog is thought to have been created by Hossein Derakhshan,, in 2001. Derakhshan also provided readers with a simple instruction manual in Persian on how to start a blog. In 2004, a census of blogs around the world by the NITLE found 64,000 Persian language blogs. In that year the Islamic government also began to arrest and charge bloggers as political dissidents and by 2005 dozens of bloggers had been arrested.

The Green Party Northern Ireland, sometimes abbreviated as Green Party NI, is a political party in Northern Ireland. Like many green political parties around the world, its origins lie in the anti-nuclear, labour and peace movements of the 1970s and early 1980s.

Small Dead Animals (SDA) is a Canadian blog, focusing largely on politics from a conservative perspective. Saskatchewan-based blogger Kate McMillan founded the blog and is the primary contributor.

This is a list of blogging terms. Blogging, like any hobby, has developed something of a specialized vocabulary. The following is an attempt to explain a few of the more common phrases and words, including etymologies when not obvious.

Harry's Place is a British conservative pro Zionist, pro Israel political blog concerned with monitoring Pro-Palestinian activists in England, and what the website writers perceive as extremism of the right and left, as well as anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Malachi O'Doherty</span>

Malachi John O'Doherty is a journalist, author and broadcaster in Northern Ireland. He is the producer and presenter of the audio blog Arts Talk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mike Nesbitt</span> Northern Irish broadcaster and politician

Michael Nesbitt, MLA is a Northern Irish politician and former broadcaster currently serving as the Minister of Health since 28 May 2024. He was the Leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) from 2012 to 2017 and has been a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for Strangford since 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Danny Kennedy (politician)</span> Northern Irish politician (born 1959)

Danny Kennedy is a Northern Irish unionist politician who served as Chairman of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) from December 2019 to May 2022. Kennedy previously served as a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Newry and Armagh from 1998 to 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nelson McCausland</span>

Nelson McCausland is a Northern Irish columnist and former Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) politician who was Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure (2009–2011) and subsequently Minister for Social Development (2011–2014) in the Northern Ireland Executive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jimmy Spratt</span> Northern Ireland politician (1951–2021)

James Andrew Spratt was a Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) politician and police officer from Northern Ireland. He was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for South Belfast from 2007 to 2015.

Paul Butler is a republican politician in Northern Ireland and a former member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. He served as a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Lagan Valley from 2007 to 2011.

While the term "blog" was not coined until the late 1990s, the history of blogging starts with several digital precursors to it. Before "blogging" became popular, digital communities took many forms, including Usenet, commercial online services such as GEnie, BiX and the early CompuServe, e-mail lists and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). In the 1990s, Internet forum software, such as WebEx, created running conversations with "threads". Threads are topical connections between messages on a metaphorical "corkboard". Some have likened blogging to the Mass-Observation project of the mid-20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election</span>

The 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election was held on Thursday, 5 May 2016. It was the fifth election to take place since the devolved assembly was established in 1998. 1,281,595 individuals were registered to vote in the election. Turnout in the 2016 Assembly election was 703,744 (54.9%), a decline of less than one percentage point from the previous Assembly Election in 2011, but down 15 percentage points from the first election to the Assembly held in 1998.

Jamie Bryson is a Northern Irish loyalist activist who originally attracted media attention as a leading figure in the Belfast City Hall flag protests. He is the author of four books and is the editor of Unionist Voice, a monthly unionist newsletter and online site. He also runs a consultancy business focusing on loyalist public relations, legal work and advocacy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NI21</span> Political party in the United Kingdom

NI21 was a short-lived political party in Northern Ireland. It was founded in 2013 by former Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MLAs, Basil McCrea and John McCallister. Although it explicitly supported Northern Ireland staying part of the United Kingdom, it planned to designate as "other" rather than "unionist" in future Stormont elections. It presented itself as a "cross-community party" and promoted a Northern Irish national identity for the 21st century. The party had two MLAs in the Northern Ireland Assembly and a single councillor on Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Máirtín Ó Muilleoir</span> Irish politician (born 1949)

Máirtín Ó Muilleoir is an Irish Sinn Féin politician, author, publisher and businessman, who served as the 70th Lord Mayor of Belfast from 2013 to 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matthew O'Toole</span> Northern Irish politician

Matthew John O'Toole MLA is an Irish nationalist politician, former civil servant, and journalist, serving as leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in the Northern Ireland Assembly and leader of the opposition since 2022, and a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for Belfast South since 2020.

References

  1. ↑ "Politicians monitor the 'bloggers'". 26 February 2004. Archived from the original on 4 March 2009. Retrieved 6 May 2022.
  2. ↑ "Abusive verbal attacks on President Higgins mark a new low in political discourse". The Irish Times . Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 6 May 2022.
  3. ↑ http://sluggerotoole.blogspot.com/blogspot.com [ dead link ]
  4. ↑ "Slugger Awards". Slugger O'Toole. Archived from the original on 27 October 2020. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
  5. ↑ http://theorwellprize.co.uk/uncategorized/orwell-prize-2012-longlists-announced/
  6. ↑ "Slugger O'Toole". Archived from the original on 6 May 2022. Retrieved 15 May 2009.[ better source needed ]
  7. ↑ "Belfast blogger wins peace award". BBC News . 14 May 2009. Archived from the original on 17 May 2009. Retrieved 15 May 2009.
  8. ↑ "Net & Politics 2006 (Top 10): The Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics". Politics Online. Archived from the original on 15 August 2009.
  9. ↑ http://www.fistfulofeuros.net
  10. ↑ "New Media Awards: The winners". New Statesman . Archived from the original on 22 July 2004.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.