nosemonkey’s eutopia part 1

Finding a political blog which does not focus on the US Primaries and upcoming elections is virtually impossible on Technorati, which is why I ended up doing a simple Google Blog Search with the keywords « European politics ». This took me to the intriguingly named Nosemonkey’s EUtopia. With its blue and gold background (a subtle reminder of the European flag), the page seemed at first quite classic.

Exploring the blog’s form…

I soon realised that hyperlinks as well as scrolling menus were embedded everywhere in the sophisticated layout. If you are interested in a non-partisan view on European politics (as the blog is subtitled), you feel like a kid in a candy store.

There are multiple headings and rss feed buttons waiting to be clicked on. The headings can be divided into roughly two categories: background information on the blog, and editorial content.

The former contains a link to the Home page, a presentation of the blog, and finally an extensive list of testimonials, including award nominations, compliments, and references made to the blog in the media.

The latter contains separate categories for Britain, Europe, and the Rest of the World, as well as a Best of and Featured sections. Media and various miscellaneous pieces fit into a category dubbed Zzzzzzz….

The blogs are of various lengths, some quite long, all riddled with hyperlinks, some composed solely of links and brief summaries of the points of interest of the linked pages. On the right are the archives of both posts and reader comments.

To say the blog is entirely void of images may be an exaggeration. They are, nonetheless, quite rare, usually icon-format, closely cropped pictures of newspaper pages, flags and politicians, which act like graphic tags rather than serve as illustrations to the pieces.

The reader can, at times, feel a bit overwhelmed by the quantity of text. It is probably the quality and relevance of the text and it’s global content which have won the blog such broad recognition.