The web we loved

Before caching 2006 for good and putting the whole thing down to experience, we thought we would record and share some of the websites and weblogs we found and loved this year. It’s an arbitrary list, no means comprehensive, just grouped in six themes that we have found ourselves returning to again and again in the last 12 months. Click away.

WESTMINSTER
There’s no sex scandal like a Westminster sex scandal (Murad Ahmed, of Comment Central, writes): and this year, whether it was John Prescott and his secretary, Mark Oaten and a rent boy, or Lembit Opik with a cheeky girl – political blogs were there first, or at least, there with the most interesting gossip on a story. Invariably, the best blogger on the scene was Guido Fawkes, who brought wit, a no-holds barred attitude and the risk of a lawsuit with every post. Close on his heels was Iain Dale, more considered, but just as likely to break a big story (see John Prescott).

But blogging, and political blogging in particular, gave an opportunity for the previously voiceless to add to the quality of the debate. To that end, the most foul-mouthed of bloggers, Devils Kitchen, was always likely to provoke (sometimes disgust, but more often admiration). And Dizzy most likely to find the most interesting link to satisfy a political junkie.

And let’s not forget our very own Comment Editor, Daniel Finkelstein, who started his Comment Central blog in September. Since then, he has searched for the best piece of political memorabilia ever, and founded The Chuck Colson Award for obscure meetings with even more obscure politicians.

WAR
As soon as Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon began on July 12, it was clear that the conflict was going to be imprinted on the internet like no other.

Citizens under bombardment on both sides posted photographs and wrote of their experiences. We described the phenomenon at the time and found ourselves addicted to Kishkushim, maintained by Israeli students in Haifa – I just heard three powerful explosions in the background. I continued sitting in t four five Okay sorry – and this diary of Beirut, maintained by Christopher Allbritton, a freelance Middle East correspondent.

Blogging from Iraq decreased as the violence worsened this year. The US military did not help by shutting down so-called “milblogs”, maintained by American personnel in the field. Blackfive, the most successful of the US war bloggers, maintains a list of sites but many are now closed. As for Iraqi bloggers, there are still hundreds, but the author of Thoughts from Baghdad, a fine site, has left for a safer life in the US. Where else will we read entries like this? “Baby girl #2, daughter of the second kidnapped brother, was born two days ago.”

RELIGION
The religious world is one of the most active on the Internet and I could fill several copies of The Times with all the blogs, sites and discussion boards out there (writes Ruth Gledhill, The Times religion correspondent and blogger). Here is a tiny fraction.

The crisis in the Anglican Church sparked by the consecration of the gay Bishop Gene Robinson has continued to dominate religious news in 2006, chronicled by StandFirm in the US and by Thinking Anglicans and Anglican Mainstream in the UK. Several new organisations have been set up in response, with Fulcrum offering a "centrist" evangelical perspective and Inclusive Church lobbying from the more liberal point of view. Given events in the Middle East and elsewhere on the international scene, interfaith relations have been to the fore as never before. New blogs include that of Irene Lancaster, chronicling from a personal perspective developments in Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations in her former home of Manchester and then in Haifa, to which she made Aliyah this year. There is still a shortage of Muslim bloggers but the Muslim Council of Britain is a good site for news. Ironically, one of the best sites for following religious debate is that of the National Secular Society, which sends out a highly readable newsletter each Friday to all on its email list.

THE ENVIRONMENT
The world warmed up, we watched the BBC's Planet Earth and tried not to cry and the Treasury released the Stern Report, about the economic consequences of climate change, “the most important document this Government has published", according to Tony Blair.

In the US, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s book, film and lecture series introducing the dangers of climate change, made the most waves. On the web, sites proliferated offering people advice on how to reduce their environmental impact. Anna Shepard, The Times’s Eco-Worrier, tended to your queries, while we tried out this carbon footprint calculator. Elsewhere, the UN teamed up with Google to bring us images of our changing world and we were transfixed by Breathing Earth, with its attempt to show carbon emissions, births and deaths, in real-time.

YOU
Time Magazine beat us to it by acknowledging the power of blogs and video-sharing websites in their recognition of "You" as their person of the year. Wikipedia grew and grew but YouTube was the big discovery for most of us, going on to play a crucial role in the US congressional elections in November by allowing candidates and their supporters to create some of the most vicious political advertising ever seen.

Try this favourite from Rick Santorum, who lost his seat as the Senator of Pennsylvania. Then there was George Allen, Senator of Virginia, who was videoed using an allegedly racist term – “macaca” –  and went on to lose his seat to the Democrats, and thereby Republican control of the US Congress. The founders of YouTube ended up selling out to Google for $1.65 billion. Unlikely internet movie stars included a boy who thinks he is in Star Wars, a grumpy old man who goes by the name “Geriatric 1927", and, our news desk favourite, these silly muggers, who were arrested after posting footage of their robbery on the internet.

LEADERS
Where the people went, their leaders followed. This year saw more and more prime ministers, presidents and other distinguished forms taking to the internet. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran stole the headlines with his blog, and two (unanswered) letters to President Bush, but it was Ferenc Gyurcsany, “Hungary’s Blair”, who felt the full force of the web in September. After Hungarian radio broadcast a section of a private speech in which Mr Gyurcsany admitted lying to the country, he decided to post the full transcript on his website, prompting massive public demonstrations and the near collapse of his Government. We’re pleased he did it, but we wonder what Mr Gyurcsany was thinking when he hit “publish” on the following sentence:

“We have screwed up. Not a little but a lot. No country in Europe has screwed up as much as we have. It can be explained. We have obviously lied throughout the past 18 to 24 months. It was perfectly clear that what we were saying was not true.”

In the UK, Downing Street offered a series of online interviews and podcasts with the Prime Minister, while David Cameron, forever inventive, launched webcameron and a chance to watch him washing dishes. Even Prince Charles got involved. Next year, we want a blogging Pope.

Comments

[Daggo]

The BNP website is already the most popular visited website of all UK political parties and, according to the traffic monitoring service Alexa, it ranks nearly twice as highly as its nearest rival in the global league table of all websites. It gets more than Labour and Conservatives put together.

The Muslim Council of Great Britain, however, have supported suicide bombers.
So it is easy to see which one the media would prefer to emphasise.

[Bryan Appleyard]

I am hurt, but not much.

[Ian Thorpe]

Thanks for the roundup. Some great links there.

[Linda]

Just to let you know, referring to Mr. Allen as "the Senator of Virginia" is somewhat misleading. Each state has two, which can be helpful when one of them behaves like an idiot, as the constituents can always be hopeful that at least the other might use his loaf.
Thanks for your entertaining article.

[Manjit]

Did Iain Dale break the Prescott story? I thought he copied most of it from Gudio and the newspapers and the passed it off as his own? Interesting no mention of BBC's blogs which get a great deal of traffic ditto BBC's Have your Say pages get much more attention than any of the sites mentioned here in terms of interaction.

[craft]

well said
great