Yahoo Movies The Guardian’s Politics Live blog with Andrew Sparrow celebrates its 2,500th edition
Today (Thursday 27 January) marks the 2,500th instalment of the Guardian’s Politics Live blog with Andrew Sparrow, with over a decade bringing Guardian readers all over the world the day’s political stories live from Westminster.
Beginning as a daily general election blog in March 2010 before launching as Politics Live with Andrew Sparrow in May 2010, the first edition covered the Tory-Lib Dem coalition and news of George Osborne’s plans to cut public spending.
The hugely popular blog has amassed over 1 billion page views in its lifetime, and now regularly attracts more than 10,000 comments a day. The blog has published over 17 million words since 2016 alone – the equivalent of around 250 novels or 30 copies of War and Peace. Most of that has come from Andrew although, now the blog is such a permanent feature on the website, other Guardian journalists contribute too.
Andrew Sparrow, political correspondent, Guardian News & Media says:
“In late 2009, the Guardian website led with my Iraq inquiry blog for days, as opposed to a conventional news story. This was a breakthrough moment and showed a huge appetite from readers wanting instant news and reaction in a growing digital world. I then ran a daily general election blog in 2010 and after the election was over it just kept going as Politics Live. Now I am 2,500 editions in and the blog has reached over 1 billion page views – it’s astounding!
“I have always thought of blogging as the first draft of journalism. It may not be the final word, but it’s deeply rewarding, especially in politics with round-the-clock breaking news and reader appetite for snap verdicts. Live blogging offers the space to tell these stories quickly and differently and in great detail, and to engage with readers about it on a minute by minute basis.”
Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief, Guardian News & Media says:
“Andrew Sparrow’s live blog has played an essential part in Guardian readers’ lives for a generation, offering commentary and analysis from Britain’s best political blogger. Andrew’s blog is a real Guardian success story – we’ve never had so many readers to it and it’s great to see his reporting continuing to capture peoples’ attention over a decade on.”
The 2,500th edition of Politics Live follows an award-winning year for Guardian and Observer journalism, including the news website of the year award at the Press Awards and news provider of the year at the British Journalism Awards.
Notes to editors
About Guardian News & Media
Guardian News & Media (GNM) publishes theguardian.com, one of the world’s leading English-language news websites. Traffic from outside of the UK now represents around two-thirds of the Guardian’s total digital audience. In the UK, GNM publishes the Guardian newspaper six days a week, first published in 1821, and the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper, The Observer.
