Drezner and Lynch Do Foreign Policy
Congrats to Dan Drezner, Marc Lynch, and Dave Dilegge, all of whom are part of a massive relaunch of Foreign Policy‘s website that was reported in Politico. Here’s the magazine’s own description of what they’re doing:
Passport will be joined by a host of new blogs. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and Fiasco author Tom Ricks will comment on military matters at The Best Defense. Harvard’s Stephen Walt, coauthor of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, will inject a dose of realism into the online political debate. Superclass author David Rothkopf will give readers an inside look at the global powerbrokers who really run the world. FP senior editor Carolyn O’Hara and a crack team of Clinton-watchers will be obsessively following all things Hillary at Madam Secretary. And a coterie of conservative foreign-policy heavyweights, including Peter Feaver, Philip Zelikow, and FP‘s newest editor — and Condoleeza Rice’s longtime speechwriter — Christian Brose, will be on hand to critique the Obama presidency at Shadow Government: Notes from the loyal opposition.
Some blogging veterans are also adding their names to our digital masthead. Daniel Drezner’s readers already know that he has brought his must-read blog on foreign policy, international economics (and occasionally the Red Sox) over to FP. Marc Lynch’s essential Middle East politics blog Abu Aardvark has also come aboard. And investigative journalist Laura Rozen will be writing The Cable, featuring original coverage, scoops, and behind-the-scenes reporting about the making of Washington’s foreign policy in the age of Obama.We’ll also feature partnerships with the Small Wars Journal and a new column, The Call, with political forecasting by Ian Bremmer and the political risk consulting firm Eurasia Group.
The moves will bring some great bloggers together under one tent, in a move similar to that undertaken by Atlantic Monthly a while back, bringing synergy for readers and bloggers alike. Both Dan and Marc assure us that they will have complete editorial freedom, so all that should change is their URLs and level of tech support at their disposal.
The number of really good bloggers who are both on my radar screen and still running their own shops continues to dwindle. It makes sense, though, all around. Magazines and think tanks are getting first rate bloggers who have already demonstrated that they’re adept at the medium and the bloggers get the prestige of an institutional masthead, steady income, and relief from the administrative burdens of running the site.
Foreign Policy was the magazine I always read after Foreign Affairs, but in the blog world it rules the roost. http://tinyurl.com/94m97t
Foreign Policy was the magazine I always read after Foreign Affairs, but in the blog world it rules the roost. http://tinyurl.com/94m97t
It is my most fervent hope that the Obama Administration will be able to craft an American foreign policy as opposed to a partisan foreign policy that will have the whole-hearted support of the American people. One of the measures of how likely this is could be the interest that Americans take in foreign policy as something other than a club with which to beat their domestic political opponents as evinced by the traffic at sites like FP. The recent historical record by which I mean the last 40 years rather than the last 8 years is not particularly encouraging for such a re-crafting of American foreign policy.
I can’t believe that someone like Stephen Walt can “inject a dose of realism” into anything. He is an anti-Semitic Israel-hater.