A new home for blogs

By Jimmy Leach

It’s an exciting day at The Independent with the launch of Independent Minds, our new comment and opinion platform for Independent journalists  – and users.

Regular readers will have noticed that our blogs by the likes of Andrew Buncombe, John Rentoul and more of the finest journalists around are now found on a shiny new blog, with new designs that are, hopefully, a little easier on the eye than the old ones (thanks to our new partners LiveJournal). 

There’s a new emphasis on the blogs on the cult of the individual, so while there are  a few hangovers from the navigational branding from the old blogs – the likes of Today in Politics was too good to be killed – you’ll find more single-authored blogs than communities. The idea is to centre more on the writer than on the topic.

Hence, Rhodri Marsden may blog about techy stuff mostly, but the way the blogs are now constructed means he may feel a little more able to talk about football, or Catherine Townsend may talk about property prices. You get the idea –no-one who writes on the blogs need feel restricted about the subject and the navigation across the Independent Minds site is based on tagging as on any pre-set thoughts about a writer’s subject.

But this is mere tinkering to the major new aspect of the Independent Minds – and that’s that you too can become bloggers on this site. Just register (with LiveJournal who are providing the back-end to all this) and you can add your voice to the others on this site and share your thoughts with the huge and growing audience the site has. You do have to register, I'm afraid - some may find it a pain, but its mean't to be a community, not a free-for-all. We won't be using your data to spam you with offers from the Independent, you can be sure of that.

Letting all and sundry blog under our flag and letting them speak about what they want might be something we regret on occasion– but we trust you. You’re Independent readers after all, you’ll want to debate, not start a fight, and, as the whole thing beds in, we’ll be bringing the user content closer and closer to the centre of the site.

Secretly, you see, we don’t think journalists always know more than the readers. We’re looking to you to prove it. And besides – if it gets unpalatable in there, we reserve the right to delete it, as ever.

This is just the start of the project – we’ll be looking for more and more ways to improve it, to link it better to the ‘main site’ and for ways to encourage users to make the best of it. Over the next weeks and months we’ll roll out improvements and changes, and we hope you’ll contribute to that process. Add your comments to this blog post, and others in the future, and make your suggestions as to how we and the guys at Live Journal can improve Independent Minds. It’s a forum for your voices, after all.

So get writing!

 

Sailing: Letter from the Green Dragon

By Ian Walker

On day five of leg two of the Volvo Ocean Race and we had sailed about 2,000 miles from Cape Town. For the Green Dragon it has been very eventful, but as the scoring gate (a line of 58 degrees longitude)  approached we are narrowly holding on to third place.

It was very nerve wracking as we had given up much of our 50-mile lead over the Russians in order also to go north for the secondary aim of reaching India.

At one stage it looked as though we may have done this too early and that could have meant losing that third place and the three points that go with it, but, in the end, we have it perfectly judged. We have a very strong incentive to go north to escape a second Southern Ocean low which could envelope us if we stay south. Our boat is in no real state for more strong winds reaching right now.

Rugby League: Looking for answers

By Dave Hadfield

As Australia and New Zealand prepare for the World Cup final, for England the soul-searching has already begun.

Richard Lewis doesn't get back for two weeks, but when he does he wants to sit down with players and coaches and get their views on where it all went wrong.

He already has some ideas of his own and one of them is that players skills are not devreloping sufficiently under the aegis of their clubs. Hence the mention of those two dirty words from other sports - central contracts.

Rugby League: Celtic Tigers

By Dave Hadfield

The disregarded bit-part players of Ireland and Scotland are saving this world cup. Alright, there weren't that many Irish or Scots accents among the players in action on wednesday night, but when they perform like that, who cares?

i wouldn't have given Ireland a prayer against Samoa, but they matched them physically and produced the pentrative rugby when it was needed.

Olympics: Waving, bunking school and miniature Union Jacks

By Simon Rice

Our Olympic heroes were today given the tribute they deserved - albeit a couple of months late.

The whole thing looked very jolly - there was lots of waving, children who should probably be at school and the staple of any British show of pride - miniature Union Jacks.

Rugby League: Reasons to be optimistic

By Dave Hadfield

Rugby league hasn't covered itself with glory in the run-up to the World Cup. There was the farce of the contrived draw - sorry PNG, but someone has to be the sacrificial Adrian Lam - followed by the chaotic business of trying to sort out who can play for whom.

Football: Kris Boyd - Big player on the little occasion

By Nick Harris

"Really I shouldn't be here," said an evidently frustrated George Burley earlier today at Hampden Park. The Scotland manager had been called in to explain to the media why he had not elected to use Kris Boyd during Scotland's 0-0 draw with Norway on Saturday. Whatever next? Arsene Wenger up before the press to explain why training went anti-clockwise round the cones, not clockwise? Sir Alex Ferguson in front of the TV cameras to justify his switch of personnel at right-back?

Rugby League: Sound selections ahead of World Cup

By Dave Hadfield

It was one of my better guesses - 22 out of 24 names right in Tony Smith's England squad. I'm not claiming any powers of prophecy. It's more a matter of the coach already having made it pretty clear what he wants in the various departments of his team.

Football: Midfield duo left spitting

By Simon Rice

"You go forward while I stay back" - it doesn't sound too complicated does it? Yet the inability of Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard to master this simple tactic has taken the debate over whether the two can play together to a new level.

The England midfielders have been granted the 'spitting image' treatment by ITV's Headcases, portraying them more like the Chuckle Brothers than two of football's most gifted players.

Lets hope they have more luck shifting the bus that Kazakstan plan on parking in front of their goal on Saturday than they do shifting that piano.

Rugby Union: The worst shirt in history?

By Danny Coyle

My mum once bought me a multicoloured rugby 'fashion' shirt from some swanky shop. This wasn't recently, it was when I was still of an age where my mother would buy most of my wardrobe.

I refused to wear it. Even at a young age, I had some sense of whether or not I would look like a plonker in something I was being encouraged to put on. She took it back to the shop.