Andrew Sullivan to quit blogging in ‘near future’

Andrew Sullivan and Aaron Tone arrive at the White House for a State Dinner hosted for British Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife, Samantha, in 2012. (Charles Dharapak/Associated Press)

Famous, pioneering blogger Andrew Sullivan is giving up his specialty “in the near future,” according to a post on his site this afternoon.

In attempting to justify this decision, Sullivan all but states that turning out multiple blocks of text every day is something short of profound and intellectually sustainable: “[A]lthough it’s been a joy and a privilege to have helped pioneer a genuinely new form of writing, I yearn for other, older forms. I want to read again, slowly, carefully. I want to absorb a difficult book and walk around in my own thoughts with it for a while. I want to have an idea and let it slowly take shape, rather than be instantly blogged,” wrote Sullivan, who says he wants to write a book.

Compare that to what Leon Wieseltier, who has clashed with Sullivan, wrote in the New York Times Book Review this month: “Journalistic institutions slowly transform themselves into silent sweatshops in which words cannot wait for thoughts, and first responses are promoted into best responses, and patience is a professional liability.”

Notable in @sullydish retirement note: Notion that blogging and life are competing, not complimentary, pursuits: http://t.co/X5Sk20tA4t

— Adam Sternbergh (@sternbergh) January 28, 2015

Sullivan’s blog, “The Dish (Biased and Balanced),” has followed quite an odyssey through modern media, starting at the dawn of blogging in 2000 and then moving to Time.com in 2006. It made subsequent stops at TheAtlantic.com and then to the Daily Beast before striking out on its own again in 2013, with a staff. In his post, Sullivan writes that the Dish’s auto-renewals have been suspended and the pay meter has been taken down.