Coffee House was this morning named Best Online Comment Site at the Editorial Intelligence awards. We fought off stiff competition from three excellent rivals: the Guardian’s Comment is Free site, the New Statesman’s ever-improving blog and the Sunday Times’s own unmissable site.
Our Coffee House editor Isabel Hardman collected the gong, but there was no speech. Which is just as well because there is a very long list of people to thank. Chief amongst them is Pete Hoskin, who edited Coffee House until the summer of this year (he’s now writing for Conservative Home). David Blackburn has also worked tirelessly, keeping the coffee flowing over the summer before Isabel joined. Our online editor, Sebastian Payne, has now overseen a relaunch of the blogs and the magazine website, with a new App on the way. James Forsyth, the founding editor who made Coffee House into something I never thought possible, now regularly demonstrates that you can blog regularly and produce columns of the highest calibre.
It has been five years since Matt d’Ancona came up with the idea for Coffee House – I remember, that May, thinking it would last a few weeks at most. I admired the ambition but a tiny outfit like ours, I thought, could not compete in such a hotly-contested field. I completely underestimated the energy, creativity and sheer dedication of the people with whom I have the privilege of working here at 22 Old Queen St. A piece in The Guardian recently asked what the tiny Spectator was doing with a reshuffle live blog, “cheerfully competing with the BBC and, yes, the Guardian.” The answer was: getting scoops, and more than anyone else (including, yes, the Guardian).
If you enjoy what you see here on Coffee House, you have them to thank.
Here are the most read Coffee House posts from the past year:
- Cabinet reshuffle jobs as they are announced and live blog — Coffee House team
- The one thing worse than universal benefits? Means-testing them – Melanie McDonagh
- The small-minded people of the abortion debate — Freddy Gray
- The Battle with the Olympic censors — Fraser Nelson
- How Cameron made ministers cry — James Forsyth
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