As my friends know I spent the last 13 years as Publisher of Scholars & Rogues, a team blog covering everything from politics to the arts to climate to sports to music to journalism to … well, whatever was on somebody’s mind. During that time we produced nearly 11,000 posts. We were never big, but we were always smart, thoughtful
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New look, and maybe more attitude. We do it because we just can’t help ourselves. Back in April, as I marked the tenth anniversary of Scholars & Rogues, I noted the phases we’ve been through, and suggested that we were emerging from a v4 characterized by increasing frustration with the political state of the nation. I said we were very likely
Read moreA brief history of S&R: It’s been a great decade. We hope you’ll stick around for another 10 years. On April 16, 2007, a few of us (mostly immigrants from The 5th Estate on LiveJournal) opened shop at ScholarsAndRogues.com. I suppose we hoped for a doorbusting response, as hordes of people, starving for our unique brand of irreverent wisdom, metaphorically trampled us
Read moreScholars & Rogues has been around for seven and a half years or so, and during that time we have evolved. Early on we were a political blog with a culturalist bent. These days we’re a “journal of progressive culture” – in a nutshell, we’re a culture blog informed by a strong political foundation. Our writing wanders far and wide,
Read moreYep. Check out #5. Sic ’em, Alex.
Read morePeriodically we find ourselves needing to remind everyone about our comment policy, which is quite a bit different from what you find on other sites. This isn’t a problem for a vast majority of those who visit us, but every once in awhile… So, here’s the link to the policy, which not only lays out how we do it but
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Hi folks. I wanted to take a moment to tell you about some changes here at S&R that we think you might like. The first one you probably already noticed: we’ve tweaked our design a bit. We did so for a big reason. When we made our last design update we didn’t really understand how it was going to affect
Read moreNew York City. London. Oxford. Washington, DC. Western New York. Western North Carolina. Cleveland. The Upper Peninsula. Chicagoland/Indiana. Montana. Denver/Boulder. Owing to the fact that a majority of the founders either live in Colorado now or did in the past there has been a certain 5280-centric identity here at Scholars & Rogues. Nonetheless, the S&R staff is and always has
Read moreOnce upon a time I could be counted on to say something like “the comment thread is often the most important part of a blog post.” When you have an intelligent community of good-faith readers and commenters, the initial post need not be fully baked and comprehensive – it can instead be treated as a conversation-starter, a jumping-off point for
Read moreYou’re probably noticing that we’ve painted the place and put up some new drapes. The migration to our new host (actually, our old host – we’ve moved back to WordPress.com where we started in 2007) has been in the works for months. But it’s been a bit of a task, and I’d like to offer massive thanks to Brian Angliss for
Read moreAs some of our readers are aware, several S&R staffers live in the Denver area, and Managing Editor Mike Sheehan in particular lives very close to the site of the theater shootings in Aurora. I’m guessing most of my colleagues here have been hearing from friends and family around the country wanting to make sure everyone is okay, and we’ve
Read moreLet’s go ahead and call it. It’s 9:47 on the east coast, and with 54% of precincts reporting, North Carolina’s anti-LGBT Amendment One is passing by better than a 60-40 margin. “Pro-marriage” social conservatives are undoubtedly hailing this as a major victory for the “family” and the “sanctity of marriage,” but from where I sit the state’s reactionary forces have
Read moreOn April 16, 2007, Scholars & Rogues went live, featuring a post by Gavin Chait (Unlearning helplessness: how donors reinforce poverty and dependency) and one by me on Joe Wilson’s speech at the Conference on World Affairs (where he said that Fred Thompson belonged to the “treason faction of the Republican Party”). Some highlights: We have published 5,099 posts (this
Read moreEarlier this morning Chris offered up a post entitled “Why are environmentalists missing a mild-weather opportunity?” It raises a pragmatic point about how the climate “debate” plays out in the public sphere and is well worth a read. Go ahead – I’ll wait. Predictably – and by “predictably,” I mean that last night I e-mailed our climate guru, Brian Angliss,
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lullaby pit 