Westmonster: Day One

Well, that was quite a ride. Major speech from Gordon Brown, brilliantly covered by our editor Sadie, a press release to get out, calls to answer and on top of everything an oddly threatening email from Guido Fawkes.

As launches go, Westmonster's was one of the smoothest I've worked on (memo to self: smaller teams make for smoother launches). Overall, I think Sadie did a great job on the first day, with some funny insightful stuff and a live blogview of Brown's speech which had me laughing out loud.

The feedback has, so far, been overwhelmingly positive.

• Jemima at the Guardian thinks it looks like "fun" and rightly concludes that this kind of thing has not developed here anywhere near the levels it has in the U.S. I'm going to be arguing long and hard against one of her reasons for that, though: that the media here is more "accessible" and "representative". No it bloody well isn't.
• Shane at the Telegraph uses us as a segue into announcing the Telegraph's own launch, with the excellent Mick Fealty. Smooth. But he doesn't like the pink on Westmonster, saying it makes it look like a site about shoes. Well, we couldn't use red, blue or yellow, for obvious reasons, and we think the pink looks rather fabulous. Shane is kicking himself for not thinking of the name, though.
• Likewise, Robert at PaidContent wonders how no-one thought of the name before. Isn't that always the mark of good name, though? FWIW, the name came up outside a pub off Kingsway - we were outside because both Sadie and Andrew smoke. So I've been standing outside a lot of pubs.
• Mike at TechCrunch UK also covered us this morning kindly claiming we have a "publishing pedigree" and that this makes us "unusual." Not so sure about that, but a nice thought.
• Martin Stabe on the Press Gazette reported on our remarks about Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes, and also covered our ad relationship with Ad2One.

So, lots of coverage, thanks to all. And one rather oddly threatening email from Guido Fawkes himself, saying simply: "Like Governor Arnie says:- if you bleed, I will kill you." It's actually Arnie from Predator, and it should read: "If it bleeds, we can kill it." Thanks for that.