Coates, Yglesias, (Fallows), and Atlantic Blogs

I am sorry to see the talented and original-minded Matthew Yglesias leave the Atlantic's blog team, and I wish him well at his new site. I am glad to see the talented and original-minded Ta-Nehisi Coates join the Atlantic's blog team.

A word about that team and its makeup. Four of its members, as you can tell by their output, are "real" bloggers, whose work on this site is their main job for the Atlantic. These are: Andrew Sullivan, Megan McArdle, Marc Ambinder, and now Ta-Nehisi Coates. Matthew Yglesias was previously in this category.

Four of us, as you can also usually tell by our output, are in a different situation, with online writing as a side responsibility that is supposed to fit around, and come second to, main jobs writing or editing articles for the print magazine. These are: Ross Douthat, Clive Crook, Jeffrey Goldberg, and me.

As is evident in many ways, I am not producing an actual blog. So perhaps this is a moment for a one-time-only explanation of what I think I am doing, which appears after the jump.



When the Atlantic got serious about its online site in the mid-1990s -- yes, the Atlantic Monthly of Ralph Waldo Emerson and James Russell Lowell was among the first mainstream publications to have an extensive web presence -- I began doing periodic online items. This happened mainly when there was something that, for reasons of format or lead time, wouldn't work in the "real" magazine. For instance: online slide shows, or instant-analysis markups of presidential State of the Union addresses.

Starting around the same time, various friends of mine helped set up and run sites for  not-strictly-magazine-related items -- which in practice mainly meant publicizing or discussing books I had written. Two years ago, when I was having another book come out, I moved all that info to a personal web site, where I also began posting items every couple of days. Last year this was ingested by included in the main Atlantic.com "Voices" section, as the magazine hired first Andrew Sullivan and then others to constitute a first-line blog team.

Although it is presented as part of a real (and very good) blogging section, my own site shows the traces of its prehistoric origins. I don't have a comments section -- comments build traffic and can create a community, but managing them away from Hobbesian chaos takes time, and I don't want to make that commitment. I don't have a blogroll. That too builds links and traffic. But the concept didn't exist back in the olden days, and I wouldn't know where to start now.

That leads to perhaps the most important non-blog aspect of this site. The best and liveliest "real" blogs link to, reinforce, argue with, amplify, disseminate, pay attention to, and in general live amid other material on the internet. That's a crucial and ever more influential part of the modern communications ecology. But it's not what I'm interested in doing. My theory is, a lot of talented and well-connected people are already pointing this stuff out. Also, in China I'm away from a computer and an internet connection for hours on end on a typical day. (Not a complaint!)

I am mainly trying to report on or react to things that are not on the internet --  things I see in my reporting or traveling life that I know are not suitable for an Atlantic article or a book. Or,  reactions I have to events about which I have some particular angle or inside knowledge. For instance: political speeches, since I used to write them; or events in places like Malaysia or Burma where I have spent time; or follow-on developments in areas I have covered before, like aviation or computer software or even the al-Dura case.

This leads to very few "quick hit" postings ("Interesting item over at ....." / "check this out..."), almost no arguments with or addenda to other people's postings (unless I have a particular knowledge or angle), and instead less frequent but longer mini-articles on things I consider interesting or worth noting.

My point: I realize this is not normal blog style. I'm doing it on purpose! I undertook this long ago mainly as a notebook for myself. That is still my fundamental motivation, though like everyone in the writing business I am of course grateful to anyone who pays attention.

End of apologia pro bloga sua. No more in this vein for a very long time. Good luck to Matt Yglesias, welcome to Ta-Nehisi Coates.