An honor to be nominated (again)

After a one-year hiatus, my favorite category of the Maryland Outstanding Blog Awards (affectionately known as the Mobbies) is back. monoblogue is one of ten nominees (so far) for Best Political Blog; I’ve also been nominated in the Best News Blog category where I join eight other hopefuls.

This isn’t a new experience for me, as I’ve been nominated twice before in the three-year history of the awards, sponsored by the Baltimore Sun. Since it’s more or less a popularity contest once voting begins and many of the contenders are more local to Baltimore, I figure making the top tier is a pretty good showing for this little ole Eastern Shore blog. (In looking the results up, I have at least finished closer to top than bottom in my previous two tries.)

But maybe I have a couple advantages this time, since my readership and social media reach have grown quite a bit in the last two years. It would be nice to win, but I’m keeping my expectations low since the competition is very good in both categories and there are several who I can say are worthy of victory.

However, I have another personal stake in this as I nominated Jackie Wellfonder’s Raging Against the Rhetoric blog as the Best New Blog. She has a tougher row to hoe because there are 20 nominees so far; obviously she works at the same disadvantages I do insofar as living in the hinterlands. But if there’s someone who can pull this off, I’m confident she can.

Nominations close tomorrow, and voting begins October 29. As I recall, a person can vote once per day.