Preston Bloggers shorlisted for MLF Award

PrestonWN is pleased to announce that this year, two Preston Bloggers have made it onto the shortlists for the Manchester Literary Festival's Annual Blogging Awards.

Two!! What makes it even better is that the Manchester Blog Awards broke their own record for nominations this year - with over 130 blogs nominated across all categories, these two have beat off some pretty stiff competion to get so far.

In the running for Best Personal Blog is Just Testing. The author - Kim McGowan - writes about her travels, family and ruminations on the ups and downs of a Creative Writing Masters Degree.

Shortlisted for the Best Writing on a Blog award is Richard Hirst - PrestonWN volunteer, regular performer at Word Soup and the man himself behind online-satire blog I Thought I Told You To Wait in the Car.

The rules of the Manchester Blogging Awards mean that anyone who works or lives within commuting distance of Manchester is eligible for nomination - that includes all us Prestonians.

With two previous category winners A Free Man In Preston and Every Day I Lie a Little written by Preston-based bloggers, here's hoping that 2009 sees us make it a hat-trick.

The blog awards ceremony is held at the on the 21st October at Band on the Wall. Tickets are £4 and the night starts at 7pm. You'll probably want to book in advance - last year's night was packed. Preston author Jenn Ashworth will be reading at the event, and the winners in each category will be announced and awarded their prizes.

Good Luck to Just Testing and I Thought I Told You To Wait in The Car!

PrestonWN volunteer unmasked!

Even though Halloween is still weeks away, we're getting a bit excited about it here at PrestonWN towers...

Congratulations to our most secretive PrestonWN volunteer, The Great Tyrant - who's been outed as our very own Robyn Talbot with this article on the Meet the Horror Bloggers section of the Zombos blog...

<- that's not Robyn by the way. Go to the article for what he really looks like....

Blog Roundup

It's that time once again: where we delve into the technicolour world of Preston's blogs. This month we'll be turning our attention to the 'new and views' patch of Preston's blogosphere.

First up is Punk Psychologist. Just as the title suggests, this is a blog, maintained by psychology lecturer Mike Eslea, whose twin subjects - psychological musings on themes as varied as mental arithmetic and knife crime, and old-school British punk rock - occupy the majority of the posts. The overall raison d'etre of the blog, however, is to aid science in its defence from the evils of 'pseudoscience'. Eslea variously tackles homeopathic medicine, chiropractors and the great MMR autism hoax in his posts. All of which are, of course, backed up with the sort of linked references you'd expect from a rigorous-minded academic. He even goes so far as to test his theories about acupuncture's efficacy by submitting himself to various needle 'treatments' and filming the results for his followers' edification. Amid all this holding up of quack science to swashbuckling scrutiny, he also finds time to go watch Killing Joke and get his hair dyed.

Missives From Doktor B is also a journalism blog, although with its roots more firmly anchored in the world of Westminster and party politics. Liam Pennington - Doktor B's Clark Kent, if you will - wears his Liberal Democrat allegiances on his sleeve being, as he is, a card-carrying member of the party. This, however, has given readers a more detailed insight into the recent Lib Dem conference than one ordinarily tends to expect from a blog. Elsewhere, 'B' analyses the ongoing campaigns again Barack Obama's plans for healthcare reform orchestrated by Republican rivals, the apparent success in the far-right BNP's campaign for self-legitimisation, and that hottest of topics: Derren Brown's recent lottery 'prediction' stunt.

Andy Dickinson another local lecturer, is similarly rigorous when it comes to including links to other blogs and websites, to the point where some of his posts are composed solely of links to recent articles which he's found interesting. Current areas of interest have been what the future of print journalism (if there is one) would look like, the growing importance of Twitter and, naturally, the influence of bloggers. Handily, there's also tips on how to get the most out of various software and online resources for the would-be blogging journo.

And finally we come to the wonder that is iFranky - a blog by self-confessed 'web nerd', also has plenty of advice for aspiring bloggers looking to establish a greater online presence for their writing: how to reference a blog as part of a CV, a list of indispensable 'Holy Shit' online resource discoveries, and plenty geek-heavy posts about things such as 'visualization graphs'. This blog also takes on a veritable trove of further subjects: current posts have focused on the on the ever-ongoing debate about what the legal status of downloading music should be.

And that's all for now, folks. Join us next time when we explore yet more of the flaura and faunae in Preston's blog-forest!