Ten Years of Daily Dish
Apparently today is the tenth anniversary of The Daily Dish and all must pay their tribute. So here come I. First and foremost, I owe a great debt to Andrew Sullivan’s work for the simple fact that he pioneered the medium that I work in. Josh Marshall and Mickey Kaus stand as co-pioneers in the realm of professional political blogging, but it’s Andrew’s version of the form that I hew closest to and his ability to churn out a high-quality commercial viable editorial project was a huge inspiration to me as I was starting out. Of the three, Andrew’s politics are the most distant from my own, but as a professional he’s much more my model and even though I barely know the guy feel that we’re kindred spirits in many ways.
Meanwhile, I know this has a bit of an air of “village” circle jerk to it, but I think his very un-village integrity is underscored by the fact that literally the first time I met him was over lunch when he was recruiting me to join the Atlantic. Part of the essence of village dysfunction is that it’s extremely unusual to get assistance in moving up the professional ladder from someone who you’re not tied into through some kind of crony network and the world would be a better place if more people had his kind of approach to such matters.
Last but not at all least, these past ten years have been a trying time for the media industry. But fundamentally the massive improvement in communications technology that the internet represents has been and will continue to be a huge win for consumers of the news. The trick is for people interested in things to react to these changes with the mix of excitement, optimism, determination, and hard work necessary to find the advantages and the ways to make the new stuff work editorially and economically. The Daily Dish today is very different from what it was ten years ago, but that reflects the spirit of bold experimentation that the world needs and Andrew exemplifies.
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