Dishing it out, and out with The Dish

Andrew Sullivan, who writes the Daily Dish blog on The Atlantic‘s website, is one of these rare commentators who’s fun to read when you agree with him, more so when you don’t. If he weren’t the sole member of the selection committee, he’d be a perennial shoo-in for his own Yglesias Award, which honors partisans willing to criticize their own side when warranted.

In that spirit, I’ll register my disappointment at Sullivan’s recently announced decision to decamp for Tina Brown’s Daily Beast, which itself recently merged with the faded Newsweek.

sullivan-150CI’m a Dish addict, but following Sullivan to the Beast will be a tough slog. Tina Brown’s circus master tenure at the New Yorker tenure left a queasiness in my gut that bromides cannot erase. With the New York Times and The Guardian, The Atlantic is among a tiny handful of mainstream publications to embrace the internets with grace and wit. Andrew’s soon-to-be-former colleagues are too gentlemanly to say so, but that ought to have earned some loyalty. (Am I alone in reading a Zen subtext into their sparing au revoirs?)

Glenn Greenwald-125Coverage of the impending Dish-Beast nuptials in other media was notable for its lack of attention to the terms of the deal. When AOL bought Huffpo, the coverage was all about price. Not so when Brown and Colvin bought the Dish. (Andrew did not respond to an email asking about the financial details.)

But… onward and upward, as the pre-1992 New Yorker might have said. Who should fill the Dish space at TheAtlantic.com? I nominate Glenn Greenwald. Though superficially poles apart, he and Andrew share many qualities that make for great reading. Both are fearless, prolific, stubborn, indefatigable, diligent, whip-smart, and occasionally intemperate. Both read voluminously, with steely eyes for detail. Both harbor abiding respect for America’s battered democratic values. The Atlantic rightly prides itself on being a big tent operation, and Glenn would expand the canvas into welcome, and hitherto neglected, territory. Then again, maybe Greenwald feels some loyalty to Salon.com, which has hosted him for years.