As frequent readers of political blogs undoubtedly know, famous-for-DC blogger Matt Yglesias recently gave up the job of many others’ lifetimes, blogging for The Atlantic, to write the same typically eponymous blog he has posted to more or less daily since 2002, now for the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
I say “typically” because Yglesias’ blogging history has taken a few turns more than most bloggers of comparable influence and readership. I wrote about this early on at Blog P.I., when Yglesias gave up simultaneous blogging duties to focus on just one and write a book, the recently published “Heads in the Sand”. I praised the move, but when he changed sites once more just a few months later, I wasn’t inclined to devote another post to it.
Yglesias is of course far from the only blogger to have changed blogs more than once at this point in blog history. I’ve done it myself a few times. At the top levels, Instapundit and Atrios both eventually migrated away from Blogspot [though as a commenter notes, Duncan still uses Blogger], and Reynolds recently moved his site again to Pajamas Media. But that’s nothing compared to Yglesias, a veritable rolling stone even if he is far from a complete unknown.
In order to give a fuller picture of what I’m talking about, I’ve created a handy chart in Keynote that shows at which URLs he has written his blog(s) and when:
This is the small version, of course. Click on the image to visit my Flickr account and see it full-size. For specific dates and the explanation for that short, unlabeled “50% red” rectangle, let’s go below the fold. Otherwise, check back after another four or five Yglesias blogs, when I’ll probably have another update.
The Full Matthew Yglesias Timeline
- January 10, 2002
Launches yglesias.blogspot.com from Cambridge, MA. - July 15, 2002
Ends yglesias.blogspot.com on account of technical difficulties. Launches matthewyglesias.com. - June 2003
Graduates Harvard, moves to the District, becomes fellow at The American Prospect. Yglesias may in fact begin writing for the magazine’s Tapped blog at this time, but the blog would not have bylines for several more months. Because I’m not sure when he started blogging, I made this section of the bar 50% white, which is to say pink. [Update: Yglesias writes at his blog that he was, in fact, blogging without a byline during these months.] - October 02, 2003
Tapped bylines begin, and Yglesias is already contributing to prospect.org/weblog. - June 28, 2004
Ends matthewyglesias.com on account of technical difficulties. Launches yglesias.typepad.com. - May 31, 2005
Launches new blog on Josh Marshall’s TPM Cafe, specifically at http://yglesias.tpmcafe.com. - August 30, 2006
Closes his Typepad blog, ceases writing for TPM Cafe and hangs it up at The Prospect. Relaunches matthewyglesias.com. - April 23, 2007
Shutters matthewyglesias.com to join The Atlantic, blogging at http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com. - August 10, 2008
Following the announcement on July 15, Yglesias starts blogging at http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org.
One minor nit:
Atrios moved from the blogger.com domain to his own eschatonblog.com, but the backend is still blogger. I believe this is because his post volume was so large that it broke their migration system when they moved the blogger application fully into the google cloud.
Thanks, dbt. I made a slight correction to the post and included a mention of your comment.
Note how little has changed. His second post ever:
MICHAEL KINSLEY’S new media bias piece strikes me as basically on-target in the typical blah Kinsley kind of way. What I’m more interested in, though, is the conservative bias of television commentary. How frequently have you seen a news anchor interviewing some other journalists for a little opinion and insight. Invariably (if the subject is political) they’ll bring a conservative commentator (say, Tucker Carlson) to give a right-wing view. And who do they find to give the liberal p.o.v.? Typically a “straight” journalist for an apolitical publication (say, Margaret Carlson).
Even if we accept that mainstream journalists like Margaret are liberals, as journalists who wish to appear non-biased (which would be pointless in a Weekly Standard columnist) they have significant constraints placed on them. Consider also the difference in worldview between a person who happens to hold a certain political position and a person who is a professional advocate for that position. No matter how liberal Margaret Carlson may be, she has no reason to spout the Democratic party line when (as the lines of political parties often are) it’s a disingenuous one. Tucker, however, is part of the line-spouting process.
That creates a real and disturbing bias.
posted by Matthew at 1/11/2002 12:03:00 AM