Here is the piece I wrote for the Total Politics Guide to Political Blogging about what bloggers should do when bad news about themselves breaks.
When things go wrong or bad news breaks, it can be tempting to hunker down and say nothing. If you’re a blogger, particularly one who allows comments, the idea of having to write something for your blog can be very off-putting. The thought of ignoring the keyboard and just wishing that time would move on more quickly can be very alluring.
But is that the right response? It is a situation on which I have advised various people over the years, and nearly always the best advice is actually, “keep blogging”. That is for a mix of three main reasons: your own blogging credibility, the opportunity to put your case to friendly ears and the need to put the facts on record for future search engine queries.
The clearest illustrations of the issue of blogging credibility and often those where an election result has gone against you or your party. If you do not talk about the bad news at all, your credibility when talking about subsequent good news will be much diminished. Labour minister Tom Harris’ response to the SNP’s victory in the July 2008 Glasgow East by-election is a good example of the art of blogging on regardless. There really was not much good that could be said, so he wrote:
I’m now in a huff. Please respect my raw feelings and post only sensitive, supportive, sympathetic comments. I will get round to approving them at some point, in between avoiding media coverage and ignoring my phone.
As Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone put it:
It can get difficult – when your party is going through convulsions and you would rather not be accessible or saying anything – you have to be true to the blog. You can’t pick and choose and ignore the embarrassing or the challenging.
By hitting the keyboards and keeping blogging, you can put out your side of the story, making it readily available both to journalists who might want to follow up on the news and also to colleagues and supporters who may be looking for information and reassurance about what had happened.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker discuss Gone to Earth and its restoration
Looking good!
Tories to reward the better off
Spread it around
David S
expats
David Allen
paul barker