Dear readers,
As I'm sure you've noticed, since the beginning of April The American Prospect Online has been running a new daily feature called "Tapped." Compiled by staff, this is a link-intensive collection of musings, ramblings, opinions, and other assorted posting on the news and policy developments of the day -- from political gossip about whether David Brock lied on Crossfire to the latest skinny on the energy bill. And over the last two weeks, we've also started to update "Tapped" daily, in real time.
"Tapped" is, of course, modeled after a Web log, or "blog," like Instapundit or Kausfiles. But there are some differences. For one thing, it's compiled by a number of different staffers here and actually gets centrally edited, sort of like Spinsanity. For another, although we certainly cover the latest in political gossip and spin, we also try to keep "Tapped" full of policy details and the latest that's happening on Capitol Hill. So, you might say that it's a blog on steroids.
In any case, the following for "Tapped" has been growing, and as a result we've decided to give it its own constant Web page, http://www.prospect.org/current/tapped. In addition, we're now running it as a boxed feature on the right column of our site, which means that you can access it from our home page or from any article page, at any time. Finally, instead of changing daily, "Tapped" will switch weekly, to provide more consistency with its URL. Within each weekly edition, there will be anchor tags allowing you to jump down to a previous day.
There have already been some questions raised about the identity of "Tapped." In particular, does it represent the centralized opinion of The American Prospect as an institution? Here's my answer: "Tapped" is a kind of idea mill that churns out various thoughts and perspectives from different members of our staff. Nothing posted there, however, should be viewed as a fixed editorial opinion of the whole magazine. And insofar as any of it can be traced to one person, that would be me, as I'm the editor. So if you've got a gripe ..
Finally, we're also in the process of instituting a feature whereby readers can e-mail "Tapped" with their tips, suggestions for links, grumblings, and other opinions. The official e-mail address is
tapped@prospect.org
.
But enough technicalities -- I have to get posting. We at the Prospect hope that you enjoy the new "Tapped" and invite you to look forward to further changes and improvements.
Happy reading,
Chris Mooney
Online Editor
www.prospect.org
