Nice of you to say.

Thanks, Kevin. And yes, that was the Prospect's loss re Matt. Also, as it happens, I have a piece up at Reason.com today...a rant about the sad Tale of the Downwardly Mobile Renter they ran last week.

Matt Welch writes well, has something to say and is worth reading, on media and other matters. All the same, he and *The American Prospect* would seem an odd pairing. The political distance between *TAP* and *Reason* is considerable.

Tim -- Maybe! Though I used to write a column for the much-further-Left WorkingForChange.com, published a newspaper funded (in part) by Bob Scheer & Oliver Stone, voted for Ralph Nader and Jerry Brown, oppose the death penalty & favor some system to provide health insurance for all Americans....

*laughing*

Gee, Matt, you sound like someone I could VOTE for...

See? Matt's actually a pinko.

Tim, you probably refer to the incongruity of Welch writing for the Amercian Prospect, which by any account is a fairly doctrinaire Democratic magazine. Aside from losing a nice regular salary, if they thought he was too open minded for them, I'd consider that a complement.

Still, I like the image that Matt projects on this board.

Matt Welch = Too left for the American Prospect.

FWIW, it wasn't going to be a "nice regular salary"; the idea was to have me write an essay/article in approximately every second issue, for which they were offering to pay at a comparatively uncompetitive rate.

Re: " ... at a comparatively uncompetitive rate."

Yay, journalism! The Titanic of all career choices.

randy, I'm not familiar enough with *The American Prospect* to know whether they're doctrinaire or not. I see from their Web site that Robert Kuttner and Robert Reich are co-founders, which gives me some sense of the publication's orientation -- quite far from "libertarianism," big or little "L."

How large a part should considerations relating to basic political orientation play in selecting staff? Well, if the point of the publication is to articulate a particular current of political thought, it seems natural to expect it to play some role. I suspect such considerations play a part at opinion journals of just about all political stripes.

Cathy Seipp evidently sees it differently. "At traditionally liberal magazines, on the other hand, anyone who strays from the party line can get exiled to the Gulag," she writes.

"Party line?" "Gulag?" Siepp is a subtle one, isn't she?

I'm sorry Matt Welch didn't get the gig, but I'll take Siepp's view of what it means with a grain of salt.

No smart mag should welch on Matt.

Tim -- I wouldn't want to over-extrapolate from my experiences, but I found it humorous, to say the least, that longtime left-of-center journalists (who, as a general rule, are sensitive to issues involving politically motivated publishing decisions) would balk at my perceived political position (which has hardly been the main thrust of my work), while at the very same time a publishing-inexperienced right-of-center *politician* didn't give a rat's ass that I have almost never voted for his political party.

I have worked the left side of the aisle much more than the right, admittedly, but the only instances I can remember in 17 years where my (incoherent) politics have became an issue were with editors & publications left of the divide. I'm not declaring that as proof of anything; it's just been my experience.

Hey Tim, Get your panties out of a bunch. I like the american prospect. I'm just saying it's a Democratic vehicle the same way the Weekly standard is a Republican vehicle, which means that anyone reading should take them with a grain of salt. When I read the Amercian Prospect I'm trying to find out: "What are establishment Dems thinking these days?" I usually vote Dem, and I even take American Prospect with a grain of salt. Furthermore, if you have any kind of honest reporting career, you have clips that a Republican would think is negative toward him/her and clips that a Dem would hate too. What's most galling -- I think -- is that they didn't even kill Welch's column for any *opinion* he expressed (if this report is true), they killed the column because who he was hanging out with and for working for Reason, which is hardly the National Review, much less the Weekly Standard. Now, if they never had a deal, looked at Matt's clips and said, "we won't interview him for the job, his world view isn't ours," that's one thing. But here, it looks like they had a deal (which means they dug his work), but then they found out he was *talking* with Riordan about a paper and *temporarily* working for Reason and then shitcanned his column. And BTW, in this economy for journalism jobs, if accepting a temp job at Reason will get you locked out of "liberal" think mags, that's bullshit too. You do what you do to keep paying rent.

What bullshit!

OK, OK, pass the salt.

Is it just me, or are things getting pretty high-sodium in here?

*grin*

Randy, et al -- At the risk of polluting Kevin's nice site with cryptic minutae about my dumb career, I just want to clear up any potential misconcpetions about this event, which has been kept quiet for 10 months for a reason.

The people who brought me on knew who I was working with (it's not hard to find my resume), and it was not a problem. Later (and after my first, praised piece had graduated to fact-checking), I was told that the article wasn't running & that the relationship was over; it was then that Riordan, Reason, and a libertarian/conservative think tank I had spoken at once were specifically cited in the reasoning. *Later still,* that entire conversation was characterized as a terrible misunderstanding, and a new reason was given -- that they had insurmountable objections to the piece (a version of which eventually ran in the National Post, who did not share these objections). I might add that promised discussions about improving the article with the editors who actually made these decisions never took place.

Finally, this was in January; I didn't take the Reason temp job until May. Sorry to blather on about this; just want to nip any potential misconceptions in the bud.

OK, well, I guess Cathy was a little sloppy in her column then. Or at least unfair to the folks at American Prospect.

Randy -- On the contrary, every word she wrote was true, unless you quibble with the word "hire" (I never signed a contract, but we had an understanding).

Certainly, but obviously there's a bit more complexity to the story than what she wrote. And, if asked, the folks at the American Prospect may quibble a bit. No?

Right, not sloppy (no, not even a little) and not unfair either. Just nosy and pushy, as usual. (In this case with Matt. Aren't you glad you let me wheedle you into this?) And also tight for space, as usual: Better to get into these tangential explications here than in my column....which you could say I was "hired" by CityBeat to do, by the way, even if on a freelance basis rather than on staff. So as Matt says, every word in that graph was true.

Kevin: You should charge Welch for each comment posted. That would teach him 'bout free markets & free minds!

Of course, TAP and Reason are remarkably the same when it comes to paying writers very, very little. (But Reason is certainly the funnier magazine, if you like such stuff in your Current Events reporting.)

Meanwhile, this is all moot, as all media organizations will only be allowed to report on Michael Jackson for the next several weeks. Good luck, everyone. And Chuck Henry, please try not to set the news van on fire this time. Thank you.

Great idea Ken. I'm liking this free market stuff more all the time!

Sounds like Matt got screwed, at least by waffling and indecision. Sorry to hear it.

If more liberals were like Matt Welch, there would be more liberals.