Actually, ‘readers’ is a bad term. You’re correspondents, interlocutors, researchers, fact-checkers, brainiacs, mentors, friends, family, and much more. This past year has been such an adventure for me. When I started this website, I thought it would be a useful way to collect my journalism, and have an easy place for people to contact me. I didn’t realize it would soon become a two-way broadcasting channel for a whole host of ideas and arguments and facts and jokes and stories. This may be a cliché but it’s also true: you are at least 50 percent of the product. You notice so many things no single person could alone; you keep me on my toes; you cheer me up and bring me down; you make me think and rethink. You’re not afraid to tell me how it is, or where I’ve screwed up, or where I’ve got it right.
ONWARD: I guess the kind of journalism we have jointly helped pioneer is somewhere between an op-ed column and talk-radio. I’ve tried hard to keep it honest and real, to admit mistakes, to think (sometimes stupidly) aloud, to take risks, and irritate some of my professional colleagues when they deserve to be irritated. I’ve also tried to keep it human, to get away from the notion that a writer or pundit is somehow above it all, a creature of certainty, free from error or emotion. And you have responded in kind. Your emails of personal support, or kindness and stern admonition have all made my year an extraordinary one. Whether it was getting through this horrifying fall (which we did, in some sense, in real time, together) or whether it was surviving my embarrassing sexual ‘outing’ last spring, you helped me stay focused and sane. I will always be grateful for the strangers who are now my friends.
2002: For whatever reasons, the whole thing seems to have worked. In a year, the number of visits has quintupled. Only last summer, I was thrilled to have 7,000 daily visits. Now, we rarely go below 20,000 and have reached as high as 77,000. All of which is to say: a deep, heartfelt thanks to all of you. I think we’re pioneering together a new kind of opinion journalism, as well as a new relationship between writer and readers. Editors and proprietors, wonderful though they can be, are dispensable in this new cyber-age. That’s a huge shift. It’s already fomenting a whole subculture of web-logging that is changing the political and intellectual culture. And we’re only at the very beginning of the new era. In a few days, our redesign will be up. Later in January and February, new features will be added. You’ll see several corporate allies on the site, from American Express to Dell, helping to make this model financially viable. More will follow. I hope this site will be as unrecognizable at the end of 2002 as it is at the end of 2001. And the thrill is that I have no idea where we’ll end up. Anyway, stay along for the ride. Keep your donations and links and gripes coming. And have a wonderful, blessed, righteous, happy New Year.
The Dish 