Welcoming the Wellington Street Post

It's exciting times in the world of political news in Canada. A little while ago we saw the launch of iPolitics.ca, an online news organization ran by journalists dedicated solely to Canadian political news. And today we saw a shake-up of the political blogging world with the launch of the Wellington Street Post.

Unlike iPolitics.ca, or news aggregates like National Newswatch, the Wellington Street Post is about blogging. You don't see many, if any, blog links on NNW or Bourque. The WSP is an aggregate focused just on political blogging in Canada.

While the WSP is an evolution of Liblogs, it's more than just a Liberal blog aggregate. That's still there -- clicking Liberal Edition will give you the best in Liberal political blog posts. But there are also Conservative, NDP, and Green editions, as well as the best blogging from journanlists, lobbyists, politicians and diplomats.

For the first time all the best of Canadian po

litical blogging is aggregated in one place; no more having to hop from aggregate to aggregate to get a sense of what's happening across the political blogsphere. Frankly, I think breaking down those silos and making it easier to get that broader view is a good thing, and will also expose our blogs to a wider and more diverse audience.

The innovation I'm most excited about, which is set to launch soon, is the morning e-newsletter. Lots of people don't want to check an aggregate page regularly. The option to get the clips by e-mail is something that will bring new readers and more traffic to political blog.

I think the WSP page could do with some design tweaks, it's a bit jumbly as you move down the page, but overall I think it's a great innovation. Particularly interesting is the logic behind it which positions posts on the page based on clicks and other metrics, so the most popular pieces rise to the top.

We'll see how WSP is welcomed by the blog community, but if it leads to more innovation, more activity and more competition throughout the community, I think it's going to be a good thing.

P.S.: Here's a news release on the WSP launch.

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