Moving Day

Tomorrow, this blog moves to The American Prospect. It's a big deal for me. I remember setting up on Typepad, terrified that my decision to leave Pandagon was an insane mistake that would destroy my audience and doom any hope I had of making this into a career. I remember how hard the first few days were, looking at a Sitemeter that was a bare fraction of what I was used to, and seeing big zeros where the number of comments should have gone.

But this site allowed me to find my voice as a writer. My first explorations into health policy were here. So were the links to my first published pieces, and the announcement that I'd been hired by The American Prospect. My first appearances on Hardball came because of this site, as did my first op-eds in The Los Angeles Times. Indeed, I owe just about everything to this little blog, and the wonderful audience and commenting community that grew up around it.

And now, it's time to pack up my boxes and move once again. I've long wanted to bring the site to The Prospect, for reasons ranging from work-life balance, to a deep belief in the magazine's mission and my responsibility to further it, to a simple desire to feel like less of a delinquent employee. On Monday, after a lot of technological headaches and hassles (all of them borne with grace, cheer, and grim determination by this prince of a man), the new site will open. There are no planned changes in content or tone or orientation -- I will still have complete and sole editorial control over the site. It will simply be over there, instead of over here. And there will be more red.

Sadly, my remarkable weekend writers will not be coming with me. They will be starting their own group blog. But I'll leave that for their goodbye posts (which are below this one), and simply say that I've been honored to have such a whip-smart group of writers pitch-in, elevating the site's quality and giving me something resembling weekends. I can't thank them enough, and I'm genuinely excited to be able to read them all week long, and in one place.

Logistically speaking, on Sunday, this post will be raised to the top of the site. That evening, the transfer will take place, this page will redirect to the new site, and all the other technical aspects of the move will take place. I hope you folks will all follow over to TAP, change your bookmarks, update your feeds, and all the rest. After all, without you, I'm just some crazy guy, listening to my own voice echo through the tubes.