Dear Readers,
Last week I posted a note to all of you about the new look of TAP Online, and the new frequency of posts thereon. I said, among other things, that we were going to bring the site into the 24-hour news cycle. I also promised that we were well on our way to becoming an online clearinghouse of liberal opinion and perspective -- fresh and unpredictable -- that you were going to want to come back to and check every day.
Little did I know that within a week of these changes, a wide range of TAP Online content would simultaneously provoke heated discussion on a number of of leading conservative and opinion Web sites. Robert Kuttner's March 13 Boston Globe column -- currently a focal point on Instapundit.com, AndrewSullivan.com (search for "Kuttner"), and The Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web (search for "Kuttner" again) -- hasn't even been posted yet on our site and won't be there until Monday. Kausfiles.com just devoted an extended critical post to Natasha Berger's popular "Liberal Arts" piece on Doris Kearns Goodwin. Which is to say nothing of National Review editor Rich Lowry's multiple postings (scroll up for more) in response to Jeremy Lott's recent article about Lowry's discussion of whether the United States should consider "nuking Mecca" in the event of a terrorist nuclear detonation on U.S. soil.
We're currently working on getting a vibrant "Letters" section going so that we can publish responses to our articles more frequently. And of course we're going to let our own authors respond to their critics -- whether these critics write to our letters section or on other Web sites -- on a case-by-case basis. We've already done that in the case of Lott v. Lowry: Lott's response is here.
All of this is in the interest of ensuring that TAP Online is a responsive outlet that welcomes and engages debate about the articles we publish. For the moment, though, I encourage you to follow the above links to see what people are saying about us -- and to look for a new "Letters" section in the near future.
Meanwhile, we'll get busy stirring up more controversy.
Best,
Editor
www.prospect.org
