2006 Weblog Award Nominees

It's that time of year -- blogging award season. For the next month or so, blogs of all sorts will lobbying for votes that will get them an award of some kind or another. One of the biggest blogging awards in terms of blogs honored is the Weblog Awards.

Here are the nominees in the top three categories (of 45) -- not too many surprises in the best blog category:

Best Blog

Huffington Post
Daily Kos
Post Secret
Michelle Malkin
LGF
TMZ
Boing Boing
Power Line
InstaPundit
The Corner at NRO

Best New Blog

the fiveforty
WIMN's Voices!
Blue Crab Boulevard
Jane Lake Makes a Mistake
Reformed Chicks Blabbing
jules crittenden
LesbianDad
TexasFred's
Hang Right Politics
konagod

Best Individual Blog

The Anchoress
Dr. Sanity
Andrew Sullivan
Lileks
Evangelical Outpost
Majikthise
Riehl World View
Blue Star Chronicles
Talking Points Memo
Glenn Greenwald

Here's a note on the selection process:

Every year this is the hardest post I have to write - the one where I explain why your nominated blog was not selected as a finalist. First, the odds are heavily stacked against you. This year we received nearly 4,500 nominations in 45 categories, of which no more than 450 will be selected as finalists.

Second, it's worth restating the guiding principles of of The Weblog Awards; ones we've used since the inception of The Weblog Awards in 2003:

1) Open and public nominations
2) Categories that allow blogs of similar readership levels to compete
3) Real time vote totals
4) Quick turnaround of the results
5) Fun

An operation of this magnitude will never be without its share of controversy or problems. There's one part of The Weblog Awards that will never get any easier - the finalist cut down. Explaining why many nominated blogs are not finalists is always the trickiest part of The Weblog Awards.

To maximize participation there will be as little overlap in the selection of finalists in the categories as possible. There are two notable exceptions to this edict [Note: It's a guideline, not an iron-clad rule], the Best Blog and Best Podcast categories. Finalists in those two categories my appear as finalists in other categories. Even with that general guideline there will be several thousands of nominated blogs that for one reason or another will not be finalists in any category.

There will be more written about the finalist selection process later, but in advance please understand that the constraints of the number of categories and the maximum number of finalists per category really ties our hands. The goal is to get the most representative slate of 10 finalists per category. We're under no illusion that (even with unlimited time) we could prune each category to a list of the 10 blogs that everyone would agree were the absolute best 10 blogs that category has to offer. We do what we can under incredible deadlines to pick the best slate possible. In the process I'm sure many excellent blogs are overlooked...

This is just one of many blogging awards. I'm sure there will be more announcements in the coming weeks.

Tags: 2006 Weblog Awards, blogging awards, blogging