What’s Up With Africa in the Bloggies – Seriously
I just had a very pissed off moment – actually, it continues into this little rant. I just took a look at the 7th Annual Bloggies finalists and realized that they have categories for everything, spreading the wealth as it were. That’s good.
There is a category for “Best African or Middle Eastern Weblog”. Someone tell me why the hell people cannot seem to separate Africa from the Middle East? It’s a different continent! Let me get this right… You can separate UK blogs from European blogs, but not Africa from the Middle East? [expletives deleted]
Best of luck to the two African blogs who were nominated though: My Marrakesh and Dotty Rhino
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you:-) We’ll need the luck.
LOL or not?! Thats actually not funny… I reckon that joke about how Americans see the world outside America does hold some truth…
I cannot take anything that lumps the middle east and Africa seriously. If anything there should be 4 categories for Africa alone!
Plus the nominees look almost identical to last year’s! Can’t they dig around a little more?!
M:
I agree 100% with you. I’d almost take it a step further and say not only would I not trust or take seriously anything that does this, but any person that says things like that would instantly lose any credibility with me that they may have previously had.
Hash:
Thanks for bringing this to light!
makes no sense.
Cherryflava & i were just discussing this just the otherday. Middle East AND Africa?. Wtf?
Are you telling me Britain & Ireland are not part of Europe?
F*ck ‘em!
No seriously, they’ll only catch a wake up if we hand them one. Looking at the previous years, they combined Africa with Europe in 2003, and Africa with the Middle East since then. That’s just stupid, considering how many good African blogs deserve some attention.
Everyone e-mail the address on the Bloggies page and enlighten him on the wonderful subject we call geography!
I am a new blogger and I don’t mean to disagree but certainly the blogs for the Middle East and Africa are very different this year than they were last year.
Here’s the e-mail response I received from Nikolai (sorry if it pastes badly):
> Just wondering what your reasons are for
lumping Africa and the Middle East
> together into one category? Surely they could stand alone, or to make matters
> simpler, the Middle East should not be included and rather those blogs should
> fall under Europe or Africa? If the UK can stand separate from Europe, but
> Africa as a continent cannot stand alone then you will continue to upset and
> disrespect a lot of African bloggers as you currently are doing, even though
> I’m pretty sure that’s not your intention.
Africa hasn’t had its own category yet because when the Bloggies started, there weren’t enough weblogs there for the category to stand on its own, so it was combined with Europe. As the quantity of African nominees increased, it broke off from Europe and joined the Middle East instead. I’ve been waiting for the number of African nominees to increase enough to warrant its own category (one that’s not extremely uncompetitive like the Latin American category used to be). It’ll be its own category next year (and the UK category will go back into Europe to free up space for new topical categories).
Coda, thanks for getting in touch with the Bloggies and posting that response here.
My only thought is that the quantity of African nominees was probably limited because we’ve always been grouped in with other continents… Whatever, at least they’re changing it for next year.
Hi Coda
Great stuff in sending them an email well done to you! Now lets hope they don’t lump us with Australia next year…
Wow. Well that’s great news.
well said!
HASH: I didn’t even know the Bloggies were accepting nominations until I read this post and it was already too late then. I guess we all missed the boat?
Well done Coda – really good to hear that they are changing the categories for next year… nice one.
[...] is nominated in the 7th Annual Bloggies, and deservedly so. The problem though, as White African mentioned, is that both Maryam and Dotty Rhino are nominated in a category for “Best African or Middle [...]
[...] White African on the 2007 Bloggies, “There is a category for “Best African or Middle Eastern Weblog”. Someone tell me why the hell people cannot seem to separate Africa from the Middle East? It’s a different continent! Let me get this right… You can separate UK blogs from European blogs, but not Africa from the Middle East?” Ndesanjo Macha [...]
I strongly supspect that most people think and categorize Sudan, Egypt, Libya, Algeria , Tunisia and Morocco as being in the Middle East……….but they’re all on the continent of Africa. Bummer!
Hash, we might be too little for Australia. I think they will be going with Antarctica. Are the bloggies the only awards that lump us with Middle East or are there others in favor of this practice?
Glad to see that Africa is finally getting the exposure we deserve. Its hard to think that we are one of the only countries that started a hundred years ago.
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