Last night saw the hosting of the first Slugger O’Toole awards at the Odyssey’s W5 in Belfast. It was very good-humoured and it wasn’t a glitzy bow-tie event which in my opinion made it a great success. Tim McGarry did the Compère and the respective award winners were not given the opportunity to give longwinded speeches which helped as well!Journalists, politicians, community activists and bloggers packed the venue out although I thought there would have been more MLAs at it, but given the ‘slagging’ that some of them get on the website perhaps it was no surprise! Slugger has become a new arena for political interaction and I think that the opportunity to participate and make comments in this public forum without paying some degree of reverence to politicians, as other forms of media do is part of that attraction.
I don’t think anyone who is involved in politics underestimates the influence that Slugger now holds and as some of the MLAs said in the video interviews shown last night, they often log on to read what people are saying in regard to themselves. It can obviously be a barometer to measure public opinion after a political decision (or gaffe!) and I would say that’s one of the main reasons why 96% of MLAs (according to Strategem research) visit the site.
On a parochial note, it was good to see a strong North Antrim contingent in attendance and in the end 3 out of the 11 awards handed out on the night went up the A26, so a good evening all round!
0 comments:
Post a Comment