The Importance of Paul Waugh

I must admit that you could have knocked me down with a feather when I heard that Paul Waugh was leaving his job as Deputy Political Editor of the Evening Standard to become editor of PoliticsHome. I would have been less surprised if he had been named as the new Political Editor of the Sunday Times. But on reflection, it is not that surprising. He's also not the first to make the move - Jonathan Isaby defected from the Telegraph to ConservativeHome some time ago.

Waugh was one of the earliest lobby journalists to recognise the growing importance of new media and his blog soon become the most prominent of those written by political journalists. It got to the point where you felt that he was breaking more stories on his blog than he managed to get into the paper. And that's what Waugh is - a storygetter.

His appointment will probably mean that PoliticsHome turns into something more than a pure aggregator of political news, which is what most people see it as at the moment.

It's an interesting time for several political websites. At Total Politics we have just commissioned a new website which will launch in November, and we're also recruting a new online journalist as it will have much more daily original content.

Paul Waugh's move totally online may be the first of several in the months to come. And that's why it's a significant event.