Ambinder: Goodbye to Blogging

As he moves from one province of the Atlantic Media empire to another, Marc Ambinder does some last-minute deep thinking about the nature of blogging, the field he’s dutifully tilled for the last five years. “Blogging,” he writes, “is an ego-intensive process. Even in straight news stories, the format always requires you to put yourself into narrative.” All that ego can be exhausting, he says, forcing every story to be in some way about the worldview of its author. One thing the blogger craves—or at least this blogger—is the heavy hand of an editor. Someone “who tells you when something sucks.” Ambinder is shutting down the blog as he heads to National Journal, where he’ll lead the rebooted magazine’s White House coverage.