Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose… last year when the bloggies were first awarded, I got on my high horse and bemoaned the fact that the nominations for “best European weblog” only featured English-language sites, which kinda devalued the the award in my eyes. A year down the line, and has anything changed? Of course not. Now I don’t have an issue with any of the five nominated sites in this section — they’d all make worthy winners, but fail to come close to demonstrating the scope of what’s actually out there. Although weblogging hasn’t really taken off in Spain or Italy, in many other parts of Europe the “scene” (for want of a better word) is as thriving (if not more so) than whatever passes for a weblogging commmunity in the UK. Maybe I should simply play devil’s advocate and claim that the organisers of the bloggies are racist, but I’m sure it’s just something they’ve not considered yet. So, I’ll stop bitching and recommend that you take a look at a few alternatives.
:-)
Thanks for these links. It is hard to find non-US/UK stuff, but the perspective is worth hunting down. And Dutch is really (almost, sort of :) readable, at least if you can already read English, Norwegian etc.
There is a lot of interesting writing out there in Scandinavia as well too (see the links on my blog for a quick list).
At risk of sounding like an apologist…the problem may well be that the organizers of the bloggies simply don’t speak any language other than English, making it rather difficult to evaluate any non-English entries…not that that’s an excuse, but it’s a sight more charitable an explanation than racism. Occam’s Razor isn’t always the only answer…
Whether the organisers only speak English or not isn’t really an issue here. Both the nominations and the final vote are decided by the public… ignorance of what might appear is no excuse. The problem here is the (very-American) assumption that English is the world’s only important language (Spanish sneaks in, but then that’s a lot closer to home, isn’t it?) I’m not attempting to target you with that generalisation, Rich, but it’s yet another example of America’s inward-looking world view.
Am I taking this too seriously?
it does sound a bit serious, but i still think you’re right, fraser. although i don’t think the assumption that english is the world’s only important language is ony “very american”. i suspect most of the british think the same thing.
rich has a point, too. if you don’t understand anything that’s on whatever site you’re visiting, even though you might find a couple nice links, it’s very likely you never return there. you’ll forget about them, and when the time comes to organize that silly blog awards thing, you won’t think of the sites you never visit.
um, i’m stating the obvious, aren’t i?