A Movement Is Born

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, Freddie DeBoer, and Conor Friedersdorf are lobbying for the NYT to give Ross a blog in addition to the column. Freddie:

As I said before, I think Ross is in an almost untenable position: as he is going to be seen as  the New York Times pet conservative, he has to be sufficiently conservative that he is not tuned out entirely, without sacrificing the open-mindedness and heterodoxy that made him such an appealing figure in the first place. It’s a narrow path he has to walk, and at worst it could result in the kind of “one for this side/one for the other side” dance that ideologically promiscuous pundits sometimes have to do. But this is exacerbated by the weekly publishing schedule.

When you write one statement of your beliefs a week, each one needs to send just the right collection of signals. A blog, meanwhile, can ruminate on so many different issues over the course of a week that you don’t need to worry about treading any particular ideological paths. Your perception can merely be the aggregate impression of everything you’ve had to say...

The point is this: give Douthat a goddamn blog, New York Times. He can keep writing his column. You can ask that he talk about stuff in his column that doesn’t appear in the blog. You can insist that he operate in a different voice in the column than he does on the blog. You could even have the proviso that it be a blog about policy, or culture, or whatever. But give the man a blog on your website. Let him post about things that are a little less consequential. Let him stretch his feet out a bit. You hired this guy because you think he’s talented. Why not given him broader ranger to show it?