The Demise of Dale's Diary

So, Dale has gone the way of so many other (and better) bloggers. He’s gone to enjoy life away from the internet*.

I’m not celebrating his departure, but I’m not going to be mourning it either. Dale’s blog did what it needed to do for him – it turned him into a minor celebrity. He’s become someone famous enough to be invited on the news fairly regularly and to get his own radio show; something that I doubt he would have achieved had he remained best known as a David Davis staffer he's gone from being a 5 Live presenter and frequent news interviewee to (in the right circles) a highly recognisable name**. Make no mistake about it, Dale is a shameless self-promoter, and his blog has worked well to promote him to the position of perhaps the most famous blogger in the country. Good luck to him; he wanted micro-fame, and he went out and got it. It shows a determination, drive and knack for self-promotion that I know I could never have***.

But this desire to get into the limelight clearly had an impact on the quality of his output. I’m not just talking about recently, when every other post seemed to be promoting his radio show or a new book from his publishing company. Almost every post he wrote seemed to be aspiring toward a certain blandness. Even when he claimed to be trying to be controversial – when he would start a post saying that he was going to lose supporters over his position in that post – he still never really managed to be in any controversial (or often even interesting). Everything was designed to be memorable, but not quite memorable enough to be genuinely striking. His Diary was the soft cheese of the blogs. If Guido Fawkes is The Sun of the blogging world and Old Holborn The Daily Mail, then Dale’s blog is the equivalent of The Daily Star - middle of the road, non-threatening but equally not essential or that interesting.

Of course, you can argue that he did do some good for other bloggers through his blog polls and the Daley Dozen – which is fine, unless you think about the relatively conformist and safe blogs he used to champion. Dale’s gone, but I don’t feel the same sort of loss to the blogging world that I felt when Eugenides or DK decided to call it a day. In a way, Dale’s Diary shutting up shop is a bit like a boy band splitting up. There’s a flurry of interest, then it is all forgotten about.

After all, there’s never any shortage of mediocrity out there.

*I’m fully aware, of course, that this happened days ago and that I’m basically jumping on a bandwagon, but this is Iain Dale we’re talking about. Jumping on the bandwagon is probably a good tribute to him and his own blogging style.
**Amended as I'd underestimated Dale's pre-blogging media profile (see comments).

***Don’t particularly want it, either, but that’s for another day.