Don’t get us wrong – we think it’s great that Wonkie has been nominated in 2 categories in the 2009 South African Blog Awards. On closer examination though, the selection of blogs for these awards looks quite suspect.
We thought it best we write this article before the results get published so we don’t look like sore losers if we don’t win any awards. Firstly, exhibit 1 to the left is the list of judges for the 2009 South Africa Blog Awards. Hmmm… No disrespect to the judges but can you spot the problem here if these guys have to choose the best of South Africa?
Secondly, Wonkie is really sad that it didn’t get a mention for Best New Blog of 2008. Not so much because it’s doing so well on many objective measures like readership, subscribers, number of comments, page views, etc but more because it appears a few of the nominations that are there don’t even qualify to be in that category – we’re not talking about the content but just the basic fact that they weren’t even started in 2008 as they needed to have been for that category (e.g. geekology appears to have it’s first post on 22 Jan 2009, and mpieters has its first posts in 2007)!!
Thirdly, selecting a blog like classicmalema for best political blog? Sure if it were nominated in the humour category, Wonkie would consider it fair competition but a blog that outrightly declares itself as a satirical blog targeting 1 politician being nominated for top political blog in South Africa – come now, really!
If the organisers, 24.com and other sponsors want to have some credibility with Awards of this type, they should at least check to ensure that their nominations are valid and include a fair representation of the country’s readers when selecting their numerous judges. Hmmm… I wonder if this will qualify for next year’s Most Controversial Posts award! LOL.
Regardless, despite the flaws, Wonkie thinks it’s important to have an event of this sort if only to encourage new bloggers and credit current bloggers for a job well done – so thanks to the organisers for taking the initiative. Wonkie only hopes that the organisers and judges do some due diligence on the blogs of the winners of this year’s awards to ensure they qualify, before publicly announcing winners to prevent the entire event from looking farcical.
In the spirit of South African politicians having their cake and eating it too, please click here to vote for Wonkie! At least we’re telling it like it is! For those of you who already voted – thank you for your support and we really hope we win if only to recognise the hard work that’s been put into Wonkie by the writers, commentators and cartoonists alike.
