Four Irish Timesjournalists have been included on the shortlist for the 2009 Irish Blog Awards, which is due to be held on Saturday in Cork.
Features writer Fiona McCann has been included on the list of nominees in the Best Arts and Culture Blog award her Pursued by a Bearblog while Jim Carroll is shortlisted in the Best Music Blog category for On the Record.
Conor Pope has been shortlisted in the Best Blog from a Journalist award for his
Pricewatchblog while Bryan Mukandi is included in the Best Newcomer category for his
Outside Inblog.
The
Irish Timescurrently has six blogs on its website which are updated on a constant basis. The newspaper's deputy features editor Shane Hegarty won the award for Best Blog by a Journalist at last year's award for
Present Tense.
This year there were over 500 blogs nominated in 20 categories and each shortlisted blog has been judged on average by seven judges.
The awards, which are now in their fourth year have expanded significantly since they were first established by blogger Damien Mulley in 2006.
"There has been a massive improvement in the quality of blogs over the years and there's a far wider range of them too. When the awards were established it was with the idea of pointing out the blogs which we thought were of good quality and deserved greater recognition. What's happened is that the Awards have set a standard which is getting stronger each year," said Mr Mulley.
Other popular blogs nominated this year include Slugger O'Toole, beaut.ie and blather.net.
The 2009 awards take place at the Cork International Airport Hotel.
