Blogosphere news and notes

There were two big announcements earlier today at the Hot Air website. One was that Bryan Preston was leaving the site to produce the Laura Ingraham show. The other was to announce that Captain Ed was joining the Hot Air crew.

I look upon these announcements with a mixture of sadness and happiness. I really enjoyed Bryan’s in-depth blogging at HA, and in fact had been a regular reader of his original Junkyard Blog, the blog he ran before he joined Hot Air (See-Dubya now runs the JB and runs it well), so he will be missed. On the other hand, the opportunity to produce the Laura Ingraham show is one that will be good for him – I’ve been a producer of a talk show myself (in addition to hosting one) and I can tell you first hand that it is one profession where it is much more fun and challenging working behind the scenes.

Regarding Captain Ed, what saddens me is that he will be closing down his original CQ website. Ed is one of those rare bloggers who cuts beyond all the hype and always provides thoughtful, level-headed analysis of every issue he blogs about and I’m with Jimmie at the Sundries Shack when he writes that he “like[s] having more voices in more places.” They do a great job at Hot Air, but with all due respect to Michelle Malkin and Allah – who are both intrepid, invaluable writers for conservatism, sometimes HA could become like an echo chamber, and if you were on a different side of an issue (like immigration, for example), you didn’t feel like your opinion was particularly welcomed – that’s one of the reasons I stopped visiting and linking to them routinely after last year’s immigration debate and have only recently done so in a few select posts.

Suffice it to say that Ed’s take on issues like immigration and McCain’s nomination do not exactly fall in line with what I’ve seen posted at Hot Air both by the bloggers and majority of the commenters, so on the flip side of the sadness comes the hope that Ed will provide balance on the issues conservatives are most likely to disagree with each other about. He’s been awesome at doing that on his own blog, and hopefully we’ll see more of the same at HA.

I wish both Bryan and Ed well on their respective new endeavors.