So long, and thanks for all the fish

By winterSmith on April 16, 2020 • ( 3 Comments )

Today we close the doors at Scholars & Rogues after 13 years and nearly 11,000 posts on politics, arts, literature, music, popular culture, the environment, journalism and media, international affairs, sports, race, gender, and all kinds of other stuff that captured the fancy of the staff.

As you can imagine, I’d like to say something in parting. Maybe something summarizing. Totalizing. Pithy, witty, insightful. The desire for closure is overwhelming, as is the emotional need to declare victory. So I’ve spent the last few weeks contemplating my final words.

And … I’ve got nothing. I’ve written or co-written well over 2,500 posts during our time together and feel like I said what I wanted to say. Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to become truly proficient at something, and I may well have devoted nearly half that much to S&R alone since 2007. All of our content will still be here in archived form, and for the moment that’s going to have to be enough for me.

We’re breaking up the band but not the friendships. Our backroom email group is as vibrant as ever, and if the legacy of Scholars & Rogues the site isn’t what we perhaps dreamed it might be, Scholars & Rogues the community has been, and remains, one of the greatest things I’ve ever been involved with.

I don’t have sufficient words to thank my fellow scrogues. The staffers who helped start it, those here at the end, the pillars of the backroom, and all those who contributed along the way…