Andrew Sullivan, blogger and editor of The Dish, announced on Wednesday that he will be giving up blogging after a nearly 15-year run.
“There comes a time when you have to move on to new things, shake your world up, or recognize before you crash that burn-out does happen,” Sullivan wrote in a post entitled, “A Note To My Readers.”
He wrote that he wanted to embrace longer forms of writing and spend more time with his parents and husband, also mentioning his increasing health problems. He thanked his colleagues and readers for their years of support, adding that his publishing company was in a state of “animated suspension.”
Sullivan founded the Dish, originally “The Daily Dish,” as a personal blog in 2000. TIME Magazine later adopted the blog, until Sullivan moved to the Atlantic in 2007 and then The Daily Beast in 2009.
In 2013, The Dish left the Beast to form an independent site under a subscription model. Along the way, the Dish’s masthead grew from a couple of interns to a staff of eight.
The blog chronicled Sullivan’s journey from backing George W. Bush’s Iraq War in 2003 to his breathless embrace of Barack Obama in 2008 and beyond.
Sullivan earned both praise and ridicule for his daily writing, which included round-the-clock coverage of Iran’s Green movement in 2009 and what critics called an overwrought self-implosion over Obama’s lackluster performance in the first presidential debate of 2012.
In 2013, the British-born Sullivan unsuccessfully attempted to relocate from his adopted home of Washington, D.C. to New York City. He did not graft, resulting in a series of posts on the Dish entitled, “New York Shitty,” in which Sullivan declared his hatred of the city. (“How does anyone manage it?”)
Gawker referred to the ongoing crisis as “Andrew Sullivan’s Stations of the Cross”.
The blog was fueled by correspondence with readers, resulting in far-reaching threads about topics from late-term abortion to gay culture to the author’s much-critcized stance on race and genetics.
Perhaps as a result of this decade-long connection, Sullivan addressed his preemptive farewell directly to his readers.
“You were there before I met my husband; you were there when I actually got married; and when I finally got my green card; and when Dusty – who still adorns the masthead – died,” he wrote, mentioning his dog. “I can’t describe this relationship outside the rather crude term of ‘mass intimacy’ but as I write this, believe me, my eyes are swimming with tears.”
“But this much I know,” he wrote, “nothing will ever be like this again, which is why it has been so precious; and why it will always be a part of me, wherever I go.”
Ed. Note: The writer of this post, Brendan James, previously worked for Sullivan at The Dish as an intern.
This post has been updated.
I have read his blog for many years and happily paid his $20 subscription fee. I wish he had been able to bring in a “name” to work with him and aid in transition to a continued Dish. I worry about the young staffers losing their jobs once he steps down if the site collapses.
My understanding is that, after a fast start, he never made his fundraising goal. I’ve also noted he has gotten fewer and fewer links from other sites over the past year. he is one of the reasons I let my TNR subscription lapse so many years ago. His NYT columns were always shallow and self-serving. I’ve never gotten the love for this guy. He’s too narcissistic to disappear, unfortunately.
Wow. Not a particular fan, but did subscribe because he was always interesting.
“Shallow and self-serving” is the best way to describe Sullivan.
Also: “Racist”.
.
Especially, racist. His defenses of racialist cargo-cult pseudosicence and his mainstreaming of its most visible (and risible) proponent, Murray, always were and still are bilious. Like David Duke, if David Duke was English, Catholic, and gay.