What should political bloggers be trying to achieve?

Interesting discussion over at Liberal Conspiracy, started off by an account of a recent Labour meeting but also spawning a thoughtful discussion in the comments.

It’s a topic Lynne Featherstone covered earlier this year in a piece on this site, where she said:

Liberal Democrat bloggers tend to be either fairly inward or local looking. There are many blogs that really talk just about what is happening in the party, along with a smaller number of – often excellent – blogs which are clearly aimed at a particular local audience (including some particularly good councillor blogs aimed as residents in those wards – understandably enough!).

What we seem to be mostly missing are those combative, outward looking souls who spot a story and want to help spread or extend the message or the point or the attack, as opposed to inwardly looking expressing their own views on it. So you tend to get stories not spreading, and where they are commented on, they are only commented on by those who have reservations to express…

At the moment, it is as if Liberal Democrat blogs provide the online equivalent of committee meetings and pizza and politics events – vital but inward looking – but don’t provide the online equivalent of those outward looking activities such as leafleting and canvassing.

To me, that is the collective challenge we face if we really want to help build the party into leading a wider liberal movement that doesn’t just bring greater electoral success for us, but also brings a stronger voice to liberal causes and which reaches out and engages with those audiences that are so often disaffected with politics.

A good example of this during the year have been my various postings about London government on this site, particularly Boris Johnson and Brian Coleman, which have often been picked up on and further commented on by non-Liberal Democrat bloggers (and occasionally mass-circulation national newspapers). But only very rarely has the story been extended or amplified by other Liberal Democrat bloggers.

That some of these stories have spread without that is good, but I think there are missed opportunities here to have more stories which spread, and to add to and extend on the information which one post originally contributes.

UPDATE: If you don’t usually read comments on posts, it’s certainly worth making an exception for this one from Alix.