Orwell Prize Reveals Blogger Shortlist

The six bloggers shortlisted for the inaugural Orwell Prize for blogging have been announced, reports Press Gazette.

Awarded for excellence in political journalism, the Orwell Prize presents awards for books and journalism and has included the blogs category for the first time this year.

Selected from a longlist of 83, the shortlist includes writers with blogs hosted by mainstream media platforms as well as one-man-band full-time and part-time bloggers.

The nominees are:

The People’s Republic of Mortimer - Party political blog (Conservative Liberal Democrat) from Alix Mortimer.

Guardian Politics Blog - By Andrew Sparrow, the Guardian’s senior political correspondent.

Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness – Created by a liberal unionist from Northern Ireland blogging under the name of Chekov.

Iain Dale’s Diary – Party political blog (Conservative) from Iain Dale.

Night Jack – By blogging policeman Jack Night.

BBC Newsnight Idle Scrawl – Blog from Paul Mason, economics editor for the current affairs programme.

The prize director, Jean Seaton, said that this kind of recognition is particularly needed at the moment: “It is especially important, when the newspaper industry is writing headlines about itself daily of job losses and falling profits, to celebrate some of the best examples of journalism."

The prize winners will be revealed at a ceremony in London at the end of next month.