Iain Dale has stopped blogging in favour of his LBC and publishing life.

Gulp. Every month his site steered some new readers to this one. That will dry up.

I must say that whereas he had far too little to say about European issues for my own taste, what I really liked about Iain qua blogger was his sustained friendly inclusiveness.

Having got in on the blogging world at a relatively early stage he built up a huge readership, and used that quasi-leadership to help others get readers too and more generally to help give the UK political blogosphere a sense of identity – see all the work that went into compiling the Total Politics annual blog ratings.

Iain’s had his fair share of blogger-war spats (a new one has broken out on @iaindale on Twitter, but you need to know and care far more than I do about some bloggerwars background to make head or tail of it), and so some people are pleased to see him throwing in the towel.

Does this blogging genre matter much anyway? 

Yes. Mainly because it is pumping out into the marketplace of ideas huge quantities of information and arguments which are helping fast erode the ‘conventional’ media and how they operate. Look at this fascinating analysis of the way that one of the Swedish women accusing Julian Assange of sexual abuse has been striving to hide her e-tracks – and failing, thanks to some e-detective work over at Rixstep (h/t Craig Murray). 

The mainstream media can’t keep up with all this, often resorting to gathering blogosphere work and issuing it shamelessly as the work of their own reporters. 

It is interesting that Iain prefers the excitement of his own LBC show, and the money it brings him. But will he in fact be more or less influential as a radio talkshow host than as a private blogger? Here is a subtle look at how such things work by Steve Richards at the Independent:

As a result of the blog’s success Dale became a ubiquitous pundit on the airwaves. Now he is focusing more on presenting his nightly show on LBC, the independent London talk-based station. He has opted for more live on-air presenting and less blogging.

I can understand why he makes the move. The LBC show is a paid post. Presenting is great fun. Blogging has no guaranteed income and can make no money at all.

But in terms of influence, prominence and as a route to appearing on other outlets, Dale’s blog was an incomparably better platform than an evening show on LBC. Indeed the reaction to his departure proves the point.

If he had announced he was leaving LBC the news would have made few, if any, waves. Or to make the point in a slightly different way, if Dale had begun his media career as an evening LBC presenter, rather than as a blogger, he would be much less prominent and influential than he has been.

Other prominent bloggers are finding themselves high-profile media slots – Guido and up-and-coming vociferous left-feminist Laurie Penny have been on BBC radio’s Any Questions this evening.

Conclusion?

Nothing, other than the obvious fact that regular intelligent blogging takes up a lot of time and makes you next to no money. So it’s no surprise that after a while people doing it move on to things where the link between effort and reward is a bit more obvious. Thanks Iain.