Barrett/Stephanie -- As we discussed last month, given that we're going to "re-launch" the site on Monday (really we're just letting the political world formally know about the site and my involvement with it), it makes sense for me to take ownership of the entire front-page beginning this Friday morning. For the forseeable future, I'm going to work to establish a voice and relationship with readers and will reassess in a month or so how and when to incorporate additional voices into the fold.
So, what makes sense for me is for Barrett to simply take a one month hiatus from writing and then we'll revisit whether or how to add back his voice, possibly in the sense he suggested to me last month about creating a separate section linked from the front-page where he can focus on the more adversarial political/media humor. I remain open to the idea and think we should revisit around February 15th which seems a good time to assess the first full month of the relaunch, since I'm going to be very aggressive in trying to add my voice into the national dialogue in the blogosphere.
Meanwhile, I'm going to have Stephanie work with me on some original and more traditionally journalistic efforts where we can, initially, jointly byline content and over a period of time introduce her to the readers and have begin doing more and more solo writing. I really want to utilize and maximize Stephanie's journalism background and experience in the context of a political website. The model I have in my head is the way Josh Marshall introduced and now prominently uses Paul Kiel, who is listed as deputy editor of
talkingpointsmemo.com but is exclusively the guy who investigates, interviews and writes/reports on TPMMuckraker, which Josh also regularly links to on his front page if not headlining his content, a feature which we'll have next week.
Obviously, since we're starting anew, not everything is going to develop as planned and I'm fine with that and prepared to adjust as required. But I realize that I'm going to have to balance the need to establish my own voice and brand with the need to pull in and develop more talent to take the site to the next level. So, for now, I'll begin the first step.
Regardless, I'm grateful for all the excellent work that you both have done on the site so far, particularly Barrett solo effort for the first couple of months. The work was terrific and really provides me with a running start. It's a huge bump. Barrett, if you're free next week, I'd love to catch-up and talk through this a little more.
Wish me luck,
Mark