I’ve watched the Koufax Awards for all three years they’ve run and have been amazed how it’s mushroomed from one year to the next. But then I thought about comparing it to the Emmys or Academy Awards. There’s a finite number of Hollywood folk or nationally recognized musicians. Perhaps ten or twenty thousand of each, with maybe 1% having any shot at a prize.

Blogs number in the millions already. Of the progressive political blogs, I’d guess there’s 10 or 20 thousand already, so 1% of that is 100 to 200 bloggers with a shot at an award. And at this rate of growth, in a year or two, that 1% could easily be 1000 talented folks vying for a prize.

The amount of work Dwight and Marybeth and Eric had to do to work through the process this year was unreal. I tried to keep track just three days and with all the ways folks word their nominations, it required constant decision-making and a ton of work. I just can’t fathom what they’ll face in the next year or two - perhaps nervous breakdowns.

Did you know it costs $200 just to nominate someone for a Webby Award? Sure, that pays for an actual awards show, but it also reimburses the folks involved for their work. Other than tips that likely pay for bandwidth at best, the folks at Wampum take on their project as volunteers. I admire that. It’s gotta be a labor of love.

So why did I start the Perranoskis? My love’s in short supply, after all. Bloggers rant and snivel and whine and I already have my own teenagers to contend with. It’s not something that’ll make me popular, except among a handful of winners. As best as I can explain it, I did it because I’m a few keys shy of a keyboard, if you get my drift.

I worried I’d get snowed under, but in fact, I did such a pisspoor job spreading the word that the nominators and voters were surprisingly few. Less than 200 overall, counting the emails.

Thank God.

I had several aims, actually and a chief one was simply the recognition that there’s so many different kinds of talent that go into blogs. The bulk of it is writing, certainly, but with photobloggers and video creators and toonists and artists, there’s a lot of other content, too. And every year, commenters at Wampum note they wished this category or that existed.

So I decided to make a few more exist. I thought it’d be a novel experiment to see which categories would draw the most votes. Wampum had 13 this year, and I created 9 (though a couple were ones they’d had previously, like the Drysdale Award, for the best conservatives who engage us amicably in debate.) Based on the number who voted in the final round, I’d say 6 or 7 of the categories should continue.

Best Tech Achievement Blog was the least popular. Few were nominated and it drew the least number of votes. Either the political bloggers are not that interested in tech, or it just doesn’t fit their ideas of liberal progressivism. Best Moving Image Blog drew more votes, but the problem there was a shortage of people to nominate. If the awards continue next year, I’d likely roll this category in with the other artists and call it Best Non-Text Content Blog, or Best Other Media Blog.

That said, let’s move on to the prizewinners.

Best Investigative Research: I expected to see Orcinus in the running, and David Neiwert certainly drew the expected attention. Laura Rosen of War and Piece is another well established journalist, whose focus leans heavily to foreign policy, as her blog title implies. eRiposte also had its supporters for its topnotch election and election challenge coverage. Anna at Annatopia is another sharp writer I’ve enjoyed with a good bit of research evident in her work.

I’ve blogged with labor researcher/blogger Jordan Barab before, who focuses on worker health and safety issues at Confined Space. And one of the two newest blogs to my eyes, was ACSBlog, a group blog by members of the American Constitutional Society for law and policy, and their work deserves your attention.

Ultimately, though, the three strongest nominees were neck and neck throughout. Had two of them leaned on a few more readers, they could have won this. One was another fresh talent to my eyes: The Romanian, Soj, of Flogging the Simian, who will stay on my reading list for her reportage of global politics. The other two were highly visible to most political bloggers, providing critical information that had a regular impact on media coverage of the elections. And they almost tied, with just one vote separating them at the end.

Had there been several hundred voters, had I done a better job marketing, this could easily have gone the other way. Thus, in the spirit of magnamanity that Dwight has set, and considering the valuable contributions of both to the past election, I’m going to give the award to both Joshua Marshall of Talking Points Memo, and Bev Harris of Black Box Voting.

In the old media world that some persist in calling ‘mainstream’ when it’s anything but, I can only think of less than a dozen practicing journalists who contributed as much to the public understanding of the 2004 elections as these two did. We congratulate them both, and thank them.

Best Technical Achievement on a Political Blog: I would have guessed the creators of popular anti-spam plug-ins would have had a good chance here. Perhaps everyone’s waiting for the true killer app: a ray that jolts zombie extremist trolls who offer nothing but reverence toward neocon brutalities while trying to wish liberal bloggers out of the country.

Just two bloggers were nominated here, and both have assembled a blogging record that’s truly impressive. One was Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo, though frankly, I’m not sure why. In fact, a write-in drew more votes than Josh did.

That’d be Peter Daou of DAOU REPORT. Beginning as the liaison of the Kerry campaign to bloggers, and from bloggers back to the campaign, Peter’s aggregation effort when he launched his blog wasn’t based on algorithms, but on his own sense of quality information. And he didn’t confine it to the Left alone, as he includes the more pragmatic views from the Right.

For his fine effort, he’s already had his blog picked up by Salon, then turned around and landed another blogging opportunity in a greatly underreported area, covering all the positive work done by the UN worldwide, which the old media rarely covers. Those two achievements will have to suffice for his great efforts, as the winner ran away with this award.

You all know him as Kos, and his achievements, from the massive community at Daily Kos, to Political State Report, to other blogging and fundraising programs he was involved in, surely has been unparallelled in skippy’s blogtopia. Though a fair amount of complaints are heard when the highest stars pull in awards, for what Kos has achieved, and the crap he’s endured, and the projects he tries anew, he has never rested on his laurels, and he’s earned his way up that ladder. A warm congratulations to him from each of us at American Street.

Update: I learn something new every day. The operation of Political State Report, which Kos founded and established the practice of including posters from across the political spectrum, was taken over by Temple Stark in October 2003. This does not diminish Kos’ achievement in creating the important and useful site. It spreads credit to where it’s due for the hard work ongoing for Temple, as any group blog requiring the recruiting and direction of so many is not the simplest of tasks.

Best Moving Image Blog: From a very narrow field, this one drew some objections, because a website involved doesn’t appear to actually be a blog. After consultng with team members and readers, though, I ruled all nominees’ votes would count. After all, it’s the quality of the production that mattered most for this category. Each of the nominees could have used a blogging platform, but even if they didn’t, their productions were viewed by thousands of progressive bloggers and tens of thousands of voters.

It was a second look that ended this controversy, as in fact, all these nominees are actually blogging.

Joel Veitch of rathergood.com can be called progressive though his productions are only minimally political. Very amusing and creative, he reflects the fact that all dementia’s not sad. BUSHFLASH had the broadest selection of videos the past year, with a stronger bite in my estimation, rivalling the work we used to see at Blah3.com. And Bushflash was in the game as the chief contender to the eventual winner.

The creators of Jib-Jab are Gregg & Evan Spiridellis, and they take home the prize this year. Their professionally produced videos provided a blend of creativity, music and humor that even amused our more conservative family members. This Land seemed to be their most popular one among the voters here. With their client list, the Spiridellis already have a stellar reputation, but I bet they never had a Perranoski before! And as their work on these videos is not done for the bread, but merely to spread the word of mouth about their other work, we extend a hearty congratulations to the impressive duo.

Don Drysdale Award: I’d always hoped P. J. O’Rourke would start blogging, because, for a conservative humorist, he’s always been funny, whereas Dennis Miller has gone from spotty to zero pretty fast. But
humorists were very much in vogue this year, even in this contest.

It included such thoughtful favorites as Daniel Drezner, Andrew Olmsted, Arthur Silber’s THE LIGHT OF REASON, Gregory Djerejian’s Belgravia Dispatch and Jim Henley’s Unqualified Offerrings. Henley, Silber and others may not consider their views conservative and they may be right. Our readers have a different opinion and who can argue with perception?

The field of nominees included a few new ones for me : Velociworld is assertive and snarky, and some may find him a bit too alpha. But the humor ramped up from there. Hubris is very humorous and certainly will be added to my list of readables, as he makes his points with a good-natured humor instead of ponderous lectures. And makes them very well. The Politburo Diktat uses satire with a very heavy hand.

I’ve long been familiar with Jim Treacher of Mother May I Sleep With Treacher. My reference to P.J. O’Rourke was made with Treacher’s humor in mind. On his good days, he’s just that good, even if it’s my ox he’s goehring.

Treacher, Hubris, Velociworld and Drezner finished among the strongest in the field. Humor was definitely in season. Especially when you consider the outcome…

The upset’s complete and the mole in our camp has been outed. We provide a 21 bun salute to the new Prince of Comedy for the Dark Side, to NorquemadaBizness (dba: Happy Furry Puppy Doing Time). May Don Drysdale’s ghost haunt you and your raving minions for making a mockery of these serious proceedings, Norby. You even made Hineyrocket and Jim Guckert cry, they wanted this one so bad!

Norbizness… I guess the Pope does scat in the woods. And keeps kosher. And the bear’s Catholic. Things will never be normal again.

(Really, folks, the other nominees are all worth your time, at least once. They may vote funny at times, but they’re all pretty solid citizens who don’t think of us as terrorists too often.)

Onward to the arteests…

Best Art or PhotoBlog: Most anyone over time knows I have a deep respect for the blogging done by Mark Woods, who mixes arts and lit with philosophy and politics. Two other artists I love: Natalie of Blaugustine and Madge/Vitriolica, didn’t get nominated at all. But then, this category drew the broadest selection of nominees and many had talents that can only be called exceptional.

And I’m really not complaining, as others I admire enormously also made it into this race.

Among them were some remarkable blogs many folks should get to know now, from all across the country. Such as the photoblog by Prentiss Riddle of aprendix de todo, maestro de nada from Austin. Or the artist/supercartoonist at GELATOMETTI from San Diego. There’s interactive poet/storyteller/artist Phil Boiarski of Galloway, Ohio assembling his works at Bloodlines. Professional photographer Noah Grey, of California, assembles some of his prized reflective works at Grey Expectations. Global citizen and now Virginian, professional photographer Nemo Nox was nominated for plic plac though his many other sites reflect an enormous body of beautiful work. Terry, in New Mexico, writes at The Coyote’s Bark and was one of only four of these nominees I was previously familiar with. Though his photography is more intermittent, it’s certainly worthy of this group and well worth cruising through three years of archives for. And yet another photoblogger, Mark of Ipso Photo, blogs from Southern New Jersey.

Update: Elayne Riggs noted, in comments: “Gelatometti is a collective, not a one-man blog. Jim Lee (founder and Editorial Director of Wildstorm, now a division of DC Comics so I believe he’s also an exec VP there) is the nominal head of the blog, but it’s contributed to by a lot of folks at the Wildstorm studios so it’s really a group artblog/photoblog.”

And then we went to that other American country to the north. Besides Mark Woods in Canada, another is Mike Clarke of hunkabutta.com, who does a lot of people-photoblogging (and should have had a nomination for Best Design, too). Extending our reach globally, there’s MasaManiA, from Japan, who I suspect was nominated for his quirky sense of humor as much as his photos.

Having visited almost all these nominees for the first time, I encourage everyone to see their fine works. Beyond Coyote’s Bark and Mark Woods, the two nominees known best to our voters include the better Tennessee blogger the old media OUGHT to be reading, South Knox Bubba, whose birdblogging and outdoor shots drew many fans for this category.

Did I say two? Yes. And in one of the more convincing wins this year, NTodd of Dohiyi Mir, Our Vermont Travelblog, and Open Source Politics has built up a growing following for his political insight, his haiku and Rummy poetry, his warm personality and now, his photography. Considering the talent of the competition and the popularity of SKBubba in blogtopia, I hope he takes this win to his good heart, as he’s truly a Renaissance dude.

And with that, I just have to conclude for the night. I never realized how hard it was to gather so many links in one post and say something meaningful. (Is this what blogging is supposed to be? Who knew??!!?!)

That’s only 5 down, and I have 4 to go, but they’re just gonna wait till I get some sleep. In the meantime, go browse around all the nominees and winners. They might even enjoy the attention. Just don’t make any sudden moves around that conservative neo-fascist Norbizness. He’s only in it for your Social Security check. And I’m in it to learn what ‘brevity’ means.