Time.com To Serve Daily Dish

Controversial political blogger Andrew Sullivan Monday announced that he will take his five-year-old blog, The Daily Dish, to Time.com in January.

Time.com's Editor and General Manager, Joshua Macht, said the company is hoping to connect with the blogosphere by retaining Sullivan--who has contributed to Time magazine since 2002. "The idea is that this is a new free form of journalism and communication, and here we have someone who's had a relationship with the magazine for a long time--so why not add his blog, the Daily Dish, to what we do?" he said. "It'll be part of our site, but he'll completely maintain his editorial independence."

Macht said that Time.com's ad sales team will sell all the ads on the new page, and the ad revenue will go into Time.com's coffers. Sullivan, in return, will be paid an undisclosed retainer fee. His old site's URL, www.AndrewSullivan.com, will redirect to the Time.com page.

An analytics tool on Sullivan's site shows that nearly 60,000 readers a day visit his blog; Time.com has about 3.5 million monthly visitors, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

Sullivan, on his site, said he hoped the deal with Time.com would increase the exposure of the Dish. "Time.com, with all sorts of Internet links, technical support, and a huge potential audience, will, I hope, make this blog more accessible to more people, bring more [advertising] and marketing to the site, and take the blog to a new level of exposure," he wrote on Monday.

On his blog, Sullivan assured his readers that the content itself would remain unchanged, despite the site's mainstream move. "This is a blog. I won't be running posts before any editors before they appear," he wrote. "I will continue to write simply what I believe or think, however misguided I may be."

Sullivan also compared his deal with Time.com to Slate.com's 2002 deal to hire Mickey Kaus, who penned the once-independent blog kausfiles.

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