Welcome to ‘Zeitgeist’, e.i’s blog, which will look at what the loudest voices in print and internet are saying on a near as damnit daily basis.

Reading and analysing the thousands upon thousands of column inches in the British press in the last year it is striking just how much influence ‘The Commentariat’ (a word incidentally coined by e.i and used by Denis MacShane in his Daily Telegraph column today) has in shaping public opinion and even Government policy. If commentators decide to take a news piece (Farepak, The Madonna adoption, Jade’s racism, Gay adoption, Cameron’s dope smoking, the Anglo/Hungarian turkey exchange ) in their teeth and run with it then more often then not something will have to be seen to be done in order to calm the cacophony.

Commentary seems to fall into three main categories – Topical, Controversial and Promotional. Topical commentary is opinion about a news or current event. Today, the powers that be will be reading anxiously about what the commentators think of road pricing in the light of the internet petition. Most, like Libby Purves of The Guardian and Andrew O’Hagan of The Telegraph are anti while The Government will take heart from Steve Richards’ relaying cry for New Labour to ‘be bold’ and ignore the ‘lazy’ protest of web petitioners. Cameron’s aides will no doubt be relieved that the general consensus (bar a few exceptions such as Venessa Feltz) is that although he could have been a bit less cagey a bit of dope smoking is rather dull.

Controversial comment is particularly interesting because a commentator (no doubt a pretty influential one in order for the subject to get past the editor) will take something that has come (or been brought) to his/her attention and lay it at the conscience of the reader – George Monbiot does this today by writing about how BAE Britain’s biggest arms company is allegedly running a spying campaign against the Campaign Against Arms Trade. Yesterday Andrew Gilligan decided to write about postal voting fraud in Tower Hamlets. Although they were alone in their interest tomorrow other commentators might well pick up on it – (in fact maybe that is another category – commentator inspired commentary). Finally Promotional comment – a commentator actually being nice about a company or a product. This is harder to come by – a great example is Martin Townsend’s recent championing of the unique Britishness of Little Chef, his joy at seeing the ‘chirpy little chap’ sign through the rain, all-day breakfasts and the hope that its fortunes will be reversed.

We look forward to your views on The Commentariat. Do you consider them too powerful? Too predictable or just plain boring? Who is the person who gets your hackles rising or who puts your very thoughts into words? Please tell us.