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by natecarroll 4155 days ago
I've seen several other journalists/bloggers/media-people react to this news as if Andrew's decision was clearly driven by structural economic factors rather than a more benign desire to step away from blogging as his primary form of writing. Ben Smith--of, yes, Buzzfeed--seemed to interpret this as the death knell of independent internet commentary.

What's going on here? I think we can agree we're all sad Andrew Sullivan is quitting The Dish, but are we symbolically sad over what that blog represented which will now never exist again, or are we just sad that a pretty great blogger won't be blogging any more?

2 comments

The latter. I think we can take him at his word that this is about his health and sanity and he just needs to chill out for a while. It's not a failure of the business model or abandonment of his aims as an independent commentator.
I think twitter shows us that independent internet commentary is fine and well.

Long-form blogs are perhaps less suited to the mobile era, but who can say for sure?

People read entire books on their phone - I don't think the "mobile era" means the death of long-form blogs.