I have some news to share: chief Political Animal blogger Ed Kilgore has accepted a new job, at New York magazine. Friday is his last working day here at the Washington Monthly.
This is obviously a blow to our readers, including me—Ed’s a longtime friend and I’ve developed a five-refreshes-a-day addiction to his writing. But it’s also great and well-deserved news for Ed. He’s headed to a bigger (and better paying) outlet, where his workload will, I hope, be less crushing. Feel free to congratulate him in comments, as I did by phone (after momentarily freaking out) when he called to tell me.
The thing is, I—and we—have been through this before. I never thought we could replace Kevin Drum as our chief blogger when he went to Mother Jones. But we got Steve Benen, who was fantastic! When Rachel Maddow recruited Steve to MSNBC, I thought we’d never be able to replace him, either. But then we got Ed Kilgore.
So don’t freak out, like I did. We’ve got you covered. We’ll be handing over the reins of Political Animal to a rising star in the blogging world, a wonderful writer who’s been contributing on weekends and filling in for Ed for a while: Nancy LeTourneau. Joining her will be another shrewd political observer who’s also been writing great stuff for us: Martin Longman.
This being a presidential election year, we’ll also be expanding our news-cycle political analysis with occasional posts by esteemed alumni of the Washington Monthly, including Walter Shapiro, who’s covered the last nine presidential elections for everyone from Time to Salon to USA Today, and Steve Waldman, a Newsweek and U.S. News veteran who’s one of the nation’s most perceptive media critics.
And that’s just for starters. This spring, if the programming gods are with us, we’ll be unveiling an updated washingtonmonthly.com, with a new look and feel and expanded in-depth coverage of policy.
So, enjoy Ed’s last week here at the Washington Monthly. Then stay with us for up to the minute news and commentary on what is shaping up to be one of the most consequential, and weirdest, election years in memory.
