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May 10, 2010

Andrew Sparrow – The Guardian’s 14,000 words a day man

By Dominic wireposts

The Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow thinks he may have been the most prolific journalist of the general election – writing up to 14,000 words a day on his live blog.

While admitting that a live-blogger is unlikely to uncover the next Watergate, he says that his blog was a popular fixture of The Guardian’s election coverage – attracting 335,000 unique users on election night. And he says he did find out from a reader that David Steel’s wife Judy first dreamed up the phrase “balanced parliament”.

He says: “If journalism is the first draft of history, live blogging is the first draft of journalism. It’s not perfect, but it’s deeply rewarding – on any day, I was able to publish almost every snippet that I thought worth sharing, which is not the case for anyone who has to squeeze material into a newspaper – and it beats sitting on a battlebus.”

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