The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

I Stopped Reading at the Part Where Sully ‘E-Mailed His Four Young Assistants’

Posted on | April 19, 2011 | 43 Comments

Stopped reading and started laughing:

It was noon in Washington, D.C., when the shooting began in Tucson. Across the country, reporters and media executives rushed to cover the story of the gunman, the Congresswoman he shot at close range, and the 14 other victims. But the news couldn’t reach one of the Internet’s most important writers. For Andrew Sullivan, M.P.A. ’86, Ph.D. ’90, the editor of a blog called TheDish.com, the weekend is a time for rest, and having teed up on Friday afternoon a half-dozen evergreen posts for Saturday, he had turned off his communication devices and was sleeping in.
Sullivan had been lightly ill that week, so he slept unusually late, until almost two in the afternoon. Before he was quite ready to deal with the world, he checked his mailbox — and woke up fast. Along with the news of the shooting was an urgent question from readers: Andrew, where are you?
Sullivan winced. He e-mailed his four young assistants: “We have to go cable” — that is, pump out blog posts 24/7. . . .

You can read the whole thing.

And then you must — absolutely must — hit my tip jar for $20. Not that $20 will go far toward hiring “four young assistants,” but it will replace the shirt I just ruined when I spit coffee all over the place.

UPDATE: Damn that Sissy Willis! She urged me to read more of the article, and I saw this:

“The Dish has twice as many readers as the New Republic and more than National Review,” Sullivan says. And on the Atlantic site, the Dish also ruled. Some days, according to Alexa.com, which measures site traffic on the Internet, the Daily Dish accounted for more than half of the visitors to TheAtlantic.com. In cold numbers: Andrew Sullivan—one blogger, with a small budget and a minimal staff—has presented Tina Brown with a gift of about 1.3 million Internet readers.

More readers than National Review? Really? Who are these people?

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers! It’s amazing that Professor Reynolds can run a blog — and he’s kinda successful, you know — without “four young assistants” at his beck and call.

Category: Andrew Sullivan

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