New look, and maybe more attitude. We do it because we just can’t help ourselves.

Back in April, as I marked the tenth anniversary of Scholars & Rogues, I noted the phases we’ve been through, and suggested that we were emerging from a v4 characterized by increasing frustration with the political state of the nation. I said we were very likely on the the cusp of the next iteration of the site.

Welcome to v5. How fitting that it happens in the wake of Charlottesville.

Things to note:

• Obviously the new design, a magazine format which will help us shine a light on more things from our staff. It’s built for focusing and featuring and promoting visibility, and it will allow the reader to get a greater sense of what’s going on without having to do as much scrolling and searching.
• The design doesn’t display the entire image from our photography staff, so you’ll have to click to see the whole pic. But hey, that’s okay. Denny and Dan and Greg and Cyndi are worth the effort, and I’m trying to keep up as best I can. Also, with luck we’ll be adding a shooter or two to the mix.
• And visually it sure is brighter. S&R has always been heavy with the black templates, taking the “rogue” part as our cue, Now we have opted for a look at’s a tad more conventional. We like it. We think it works.

What else? Oh, right: it’s hard to say if you’ll detect an attitude, but we have completely stopped caring if anyone is watching.

I observed in the aforementioned anniversary piece that we have always wanted an audience – and once upon a time, when we were an aggressively political blog primarily, we had one. But that process was sucking the life out of us and we couldn’t keep putting ourselves through the pain and frustration. Since then, we haven’t been willing to do the kinds of things large audiences are attracted to. The result is now we seem to appeal to a smaller group of very thoughtful readers – quality vs quantity, and we’re okay with that.

We’ve talked, and have decided – unanimously – to just say fuck it. We do what we do because we want to, and in the case of some of us because we can’t help ourselves. We’d do it if we had a million readers a day and we’d do it if we had 10 a week. We understand the society we’re working with here. We have no illusions.

So here we are. We hope you like the new look. We hope you’ll read and react. We hope you’ll click on the photography and art. We hope you’ll be provoked, we hope you’ll think and learn, and if you’re so inclined we hope you’ll tell your friends about this interesting, unconventional little corner of the Internet.

We’ll be carrying on one way or the other.