1)      The title suggests that you’re leaving.  Please, I beg you – say it ain’t so.

It is so.  Strange as it may seem to all of us, this will be my last post on HughHewitt.com.

2)      That’s really going to disappoint some people.  Richard_223 may never recover from the blow.

He’ll be fine.  We’ll all be fine.

3)      This has something to do with the Indians playing the Red Sox in the American League Championship Series, doesn’t it?  Hugh insisted that you renounce your fealty to the Sox and you refused, right? 

Not quite. Although I like the image of me as a Red Sox supporting version of Sir Thomas Moore and Hugh prowling the Efax studios yelling at the Generalissimo, “Won’t someone rid me of this meddlesome Sox fan!”  Unfortunately, the truth is a lot less colorful.

4)      So what is the truth?

The truth is that I’m moving full-time to the Weekly Standard. 

5)      What will you be doing there, other than fetching Mr. Kristol’s dry-cleaning and trimming Mr. Barnes’s lawn?

I’m going to ignore the tone of the last question, concluding that the pain of this moment has caused you to lash out blindly.  The plan is that I’ll be contributing a lot both to the magazine and to the daily virtual issue of the magazine, the Daily Standard.  So if you want to follow me, you can get the mag or punch up WeeklyStandard.com.  I won’t be writing quite as much as I have here, but I’ll be writing a lot, and hopefully better.

6)      What would you suggest those of us who want to show our appreciation for your tireless 15 months of blogging at this site do?

Well, since you asked…I have a pamphlet coming out in the next couple of weeks on my fight against Cystic Fibrosis.  It’s something I really poured my heart into, and it will be priced to move at a very reasonable $4.  I wouldn’t mind if everyone here bought a copy. Or ten.  I’ve also promised myself and virtually everyone in my private life that this will be the last time I write on CF.  That is, however, a decision I reserve the right to revisit if some publisher wants to extend me an obscene advance to turn the pamphlet into a book.

Also, if you’re really dying to show your appreciation for a job well done, I wouldn’t mind if you contributed to my brand spanking new tip jar.  You'll have to click on my old Soxblog site and then click the cheesy "Make a Donation" button, but the warm feeling you'll get will be well worth the bother.

I’ve resisted the urge to rattle a tip jar for 15 months on this site, figuring it would look unseemly.  But now, with one foot out the door and the other to follow in a few paragraphs, I can honestly say that receiving that sort of recognition from the readers here would mean a lot.  Not that it necessarily matters, but the only downside to writing for a career is that the financial remuneration part of the equation isn’t quite at the rock-star level. Once again, please go to Soxblog and click the "Make a Donation" button if you’re so inclined.

Okay, the unseemly self-promotion part of this essay is now officially complete. Any other questions?

7)      So does this mean you won’t be a blogger anymore?

I guess it does.  But you know, I think the terms “blog” and “blogging” have become hopelessly imprecise.  “Blogging” usually refers to what the pioneers of the form, Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan, did and do.  But I also was a blogger, and did something different.  I wrote long-form – my typical post was at least the length of a newspaper op-ed, often 2-3x that length.  I’ll also insist to my dying breath that virtually every word I produced here was as good as I could make it.  The time demands of blogging never affected the quality of what I wrote, nor did the widely perceived need to say something about every big topic. (Limited quantities of talent and insight, on the other hand, profoundly affected the quality of my end-product.)  I would often get letters saying, “So-and-so happened 4 hours ago.  You have to write about it!”  I ignored those letters.  I only wrote when I had something to say, and I took as much time as I needed to make it good, or at least as good as I could make it.

In other words, I’ve considered myself a writer who wrote on a blog.  I’ll still be a writer where I’m going.

8)      As you leave the blogosphere, any final thoughts on its future?

The upside is unlimited.  Drudge gets something like 16 million hits a day.  That shows the number of conservatives who are eager to get online news content.  The top conservative blogs get 250,000 hits a day.  That means the conservative blogosphere has growth potential of roughly 15.75 million hits a day.

9)      How can it get there?

I’m not sure, but I do know this much – the next big thing in this regard has yet to be invented.  The growth of the conservative blogosphere (and liberal blogosphere) flat-lined a couple of years ago.  Next year, the numbers will jump up because of the election, but I think we’ve already seen something close to the ceiling of the amount of Americans interested in gathering news and opinion the way the blogosphere generally provides it.

10)  Will you miss being a part of the blogosphere?

Very much.  Three years ago, I was an anonymous shlub who started a blog hoping to get noticed.  For a few months, only my immediate family members and a couple of friends read that blog, and frankly I always figured some of them weren’t reading it as religiously as they should have been.  (I would spring pop-quizzes on them on occasion.) The blogosphere allowed me to break through and get noticed.

More importantly, it has given brilliant people like Ace and Allah and MKH and Michelle Malkin and Charles Johnson a voice, something that has enriched a lot of our lives.  To paraphrase Chico Escuela, the blogopshere been very, very good to me.  And all of us.

11)  Are your eyes misting up as we near the end?

I’m generally not a very sentimental guy.  Change happens. Sometimes it’s for the good, sometimes it’s not, but regardless, change will come.  That said, I will miss this site and Townhall very much.  Jonathan Last at the Standard gave me my first big break when he began accepting online pieces from me in early 2005.  I got my next big break when I came to this site.  Hugh Hewitt is a great mentor and a better friend.  I was very fortunate here to have this forum.  Very lucky indeed.

12)  Now I’m misting up.

Stop it.  You can act like a man!  Besides, it’s not like we’ll never see each other again.  I’ll still be filling in for Hugh on the radio show and I’ll still be writing. Starting on Monday, be sure to check out WeeklyStandard.com.  I won’t be hard to find.

13)  Wait a minute!  I forgot what I should do if I want to show my appreciation for 15 months of exquisite blogging.  Can I have a reminder?

Sure.  Buy my pamphlet on Cystic Fibrosis.  And hit my tip jar at Soxblog. 

14)  Any final thoughts?

I just want to thank everyone who’s been a part of this chapter of my life.  Hugh, the great team at Townhall including Chuck, Jonathan, Matt, Josue, Jennifer and MKH, my brilliant PhotoShop guy Fesitivus, and especially the readers. I’ll miss all of you, except of course the psychotic Ron Paul groupies.  I’ll really miss the personal connection that blogging fosters.  To that end, my email address won’t be changing – I hope you’ll keep writing in.

Compliments? Complaints? Weepy farewells? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

UPDATE: By popular demand, PhotoShop ace Festivus' talents will shine one last time.  Enjoy!