Throughout 2009, I kept a running list of the best journalism I encountered. Although I endeavored to remain as impartial as possible, note that I've been an employee of The Atlantic, that I'd eagerly write for numerous publications that received awards, that I have too many friends/acquaintances/professional contacts in journalism to disclose them all, and that the number of pieces I miss every year far exceeds the number I'm able to read.

In other words, this isn't an infallible account of journalism's best, but I aim to make it the best roundup that any one person can offer, one of these years I intend to do better than the committees who pick the Pulitzer Prizes and National Magazine Awards (the pressure's on, especially since you guys charge entry fees), and if nothing else my effort encompasses writing that is well worth your time.

If you find this a valuable resource or if you want to help support future incarnations, do so through the donate button on the right margin here (it's another project I recently worked on).

The 2008 awards are here, and you can get exceptional journalism throughout the year by following JournoCurator on Twitter.

As is proper, the categories below were chosen after the winning pieces were selected, and serve only as an organizational tool. And now, without further delay

EXCEPTIONAL STORYTELLING

The Washington Post

Fatal Distraction By Gene Weingarten

Forgetting a child in the back seat of a hot, parked car is a horrifying, inexcusable mistake. But is it a crime?

Rolling Stone

The Boy Who Heard Too Much by David Kushner

He was a 14-year-old blind kid, angry and alone. Then he discovered that he possessed a strange and fearsome superpower one that put him in the cross hairs of the FBI.

The Washington Monthly

Pie in the Sky by Mariah Blake

What happened when a billionaire pizza mogul tried to build an elite Catholic law school.

Chicago Magazine

A Mugging on Lake Street By John Conroy

A veteran investigative reporter looks into his own beating and finds himself confronting harsh and lingering questions of race.

Esquire

How I Convinced a Death Row Murderer Not to Die by Michael Finkel

He was the one person on earth I wanted to die, and instead I've helped to save his goddamn life.

LA Weekly

Box of Broken Dreams by Mark Groubert

A young photographer's belongings are abandoned on a Hollywood street, leaving our writer to piece together the fragments of his life.

This American Life

Mistakes Were Made Act One: You're As Cold As Ice

It's the late 1960s, and in the new technology of cryonics, a California TV repairman named Bob sees an opportunity to help people cheat death. But freezing dead people so scientists can reanimate them in the future is a lot harder than it sounds. Harder still was admitting to the family members of people Bob had frozen that he'd screwed up. Badly.

AND

Re-United, Act II: If By Chance We Meet Again

Ralph and Sandra Fisher, who run a show-animal business in Texas, had a beloved Brahman bull named Chance. Chance was the gentlest bull they'd ever seenmore like a pet dog than a bull. When he finally died, Ralph and Sandra were devastated. Around that same time, scientists at Texas A & M University were looking for animal subjects for a cloning project. They already had some tissue from Chance because they'd treated him for an illness. So Ralph and Sandra offered up Chance's DNA for the experiment. Second Chance was born. And he was, eerily, just like Chance. Except he wasn't. Which they found out the hard way.

PROFILES

The Weekly Standard

A Rake's Progress: Marion Barry bares (almost) all. by Matt Labash

The definitive profile.

The Virginia Quarterly Review

Double Vision: The Art of Trevor and Ryan Oakes by Lawrence Weschler

There isn't a person alive who can best Mr. Weschler at writing about art accessibly without sacrificing substance.

The American Prospect

Constant Comment by Kerry Howley

How Kathleen Parker became America's most read woman columnist.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

The New York Times

Held by the Taliban by David Rohde

The most riveting piece of the year.

Slate

The Letter of Last Resort The Decision About Nuclear Apocalypse Lying in a Safe at the Bottom of the Sea by Ron Rosenbaum

The writer uses a fascinating, little known fact to explore the terrible paradox of nuclear deterrence.

The Virginia Quarterly Review

Empires of the Mind: SERE, Guantnamo, and the Legacies of Torture by David J. Morris

This first person account ends with the kicker of the year.

The New Atlantis

AIDS Relief and Moral Myopia by Travis Kavulla

The writer does his best to tackle the thorny subject of attitudes toward AIDS in parts of Africa that are particularly hard hit, explaining to a Western audience why our assumptions about fighting the disease may not track reality.

The New Yorker

Gangland by Jon Lee Anderson (subscription required)

Inside the favellas of Rio.

World Hum

You're American? I Should Kill You!' by Cory Eldridge

To most of his roommates at his United Arab Emirates apartment, Cory Eldridge was an exotic American. To one of them, the Iraqi who'd been held at Abu Ghraib prison, he was President Bush.'

INVESTIGATIONS

The New Yorker

Trial By Fire by David Grann

Nearly proves that an innocent man was executed in Texas.

The Independent

The Dark Side of Dubai by Johann Hari

Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the city state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging.

The New York Times Magazine

Strained by Katrina, a Hospital Faced Deadly Choices by Sheri Fink

Arguably the most impressive reporting job this year.

The New Yorker

Brain Gain by Margaret Talbot

The underground world of neuroenhancing drugs.

This American Life

Turncoat

All three acts.

Slate

How Often Do Women Falsely Cry Rape? By Emily Bazelon and Rachael Larimore

A well-executed effort to treat this charged question as empirically as possible.

HEALTH CARE

Wired

An Epidemic of Fear by Amy Wallace

How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All.

The New Yorker

The Cost Conundrum by Atul Gawande

What a Texas town can teach us about health care.

The Atlantic

How American Health Care Killed My Father by David Goldhill

After the needless death of his father, the author, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated will not fix it. Here's a radical solution to an agonizing problem.

This American Life

Fine Print: Act Three Restrictions May Apply

On the least-defensible insurance industry practice.

AND

The radio show's exceptional two-part broadcast explaining the American health care system here and here.

SPORTS & LEISURE

GQ

Game Drain by Jeanne Marie Laskas

What the NFL doesn't want you to know.

The Weekly Standard

The Cocktail Renaissance by Robert Messenger

The piece I most enjoyed reading this year.

The New York Times Magazine

The No Stat All Star by Michael Lewis

The writer's sports prose is as fun to read as anything by Malcolm Gladwell, its arguments are as counter-intuitive, and its conclusions on basketball are more persuasive (in other words, NBA coaches would be better served trading for Shane Battier than instituting a full court press).

BEST RANT

The New York Press

Flat N All That by Matt Taibbi

The writer's polemical rants are hit and miss. This one puts Tom Friedman so far up a creek he'll need three shovels and a steering wheel to spelunk himself out.

SHORT ESSAYS

Obsidian Wings

Why Do They Stay? by Hilzoy

Shortly before retiring from the blogosphere, the dearly missed blogger explained why battered women don't leave their abusers.

The American Scene

A New Way to Think About Life by Reihan Salam

The Cosmic Timekeeper is on your side.

The New Yorker

William Safire (1929 2009) Mother Hen by Hendrik Hertzberg

A lesson in how to write an obit for someone with whom you profoundly disagreed.

The Washington Examiner

The lonely passing of Senator Kennedy by J.P. Freier

Empathy as a rarely used but useful tool in editorial writing.

The Washington Post

Murphy's Law by Gene Weingarten

The writer excels on every topic he tackles. Dogs are no exception.

This American Life

Pro Se: Act I, Psycho Dabble

Contributor Jon Ronson tells the story of a man who has spent more than a decade trying to convince doctors that he's not mentally ill. But the more he argues his case, the less they believe him.

BEST ARTICLE RENDERED UNSEARCHABLE DUE TO A CRIMINALLY BAD WEB SITE

The New Republic

An unknown story from the magazine whose URL I saved, but that I cannot now access due to their long-running, maddening archival clusterfuck. Can you help me out, criminally underpaid TNR interns? http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=12ef5554-1023-4be9-ad93-681003b280ef

EDUCATION

The Washington Monthly

College for $99 a Month by Kevin Carey

The next generation of online education could be great for studentsand catastrophic for universities.

This American Life

Going Big Prologue and Act One: Harlem Renaissance

Paul Tough reports on the Harlem Children's Zone, and its CEO and president, Geoffrey Canada. Among the project's many facets is Baby College, an 8-week program where young parents and parents-to-be learn how to help their children get the education they need to be successful.

Human Resources Act One: Rubber Room.

The true story of little-known rooms in the New York City Board of Education building. Teachers are told to report there instead of their classrooms. No reason is usually given. When they arrive, they find they've been put on some kind of probationary status, and they must report every day until the matter is cleared up.

The New Yorker

The Rubber Room by Steven Brill

The battle over New York City's worst teachers.

TRAVEL

World Hum

Where No Travel Writer Has Gone Before by Rolf Potts

The writer joins Trekkies aboard a Star Trek' theme cruise to Bermuda.

MichaelTotten.com

Christopher Hitchens and the Battle of Beirut by Michael Totten

A famous writer, a swastika, and a street brawl that could've turned deadly.

The Atlantic Online

Keep scrolling down through Graeme Wood's astonishing blog Prepared for the Worst, penned by the man who may be 2009's most well-traveled writer.

BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS

The Wall Street Journal

No Grapes, No Nuts, No Market Share by Barry Newman

All the world's Grape Nuts come from a dirty-white, six-story concrete building with steam rising out of the roof here in the San Joaquin Valley. The valley grows lots of grapes and lots of nuts, so the factory's location would make sense, if Grape Nuts contained any local ingredients. Which it doesn't.

Vanity Fair

Wall Street on the Tundra by Michael Lewis

Iceland's de facto bankruptcyits currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insuranceresulted from a stunning collective madness.

Wired

Why Craigslist is Such a Mess by Gary Wolf

The worst site that we all use by choice.

Vanity Fair

The Man Who Crashed the World by Michael Lewis

Is there anyone on earth who can write a story as enjoyable about AIG? (This story is complemented by an episode of This American Life that is also excellent.)

This American Life

Scenes From A Recession.

All three acts and no, this isn't the same episode linked above.

CULTURE & CRITICISM

The American Spectator

The New Humanism by Roger Scruton

Why it's worse than the old humanism.

Slate

My Newborn is Like a Narcotic by Katie Roiphe

Ignore the subtitle and enjoy a blissful piece.

Reason

Anatomy of a Child Pornographer by Nancy Rommelmann

What happens when adults catch teenagers sexting photos of each other? The death of common sense.

Vanity Fair

A Crime of Shadows by Mark Bowden

After months of prowling Internet chat rooms, posing as the mother of two young daughters, Detective Michele Deery thought she had a live one: parafling,' a married, middle-aged man who claimed he wanted to have sex with her kids. But was he just playing a twisted game of seduction? Both the policewoman and her target give the author their versions of the truth, in a case that challenges the conventional wisdom about online sexual predators, and blurs the lines among crime, intent,' and enticement.

The New York Times Magazine

Married (Happily) With Issues by Elizabeth Weil

The writer grapples with America's marriage counseling trend by revealing the intimate details of what happened when she and her husband set out to improve their union, and wound up testing it.

New York Magazine

The Sex Diaries: A Critical (But Highly Sympathetic) Reading of New Yorkers' Sexual Habits and Anxieties by Wesley Yang

The New York Times Magazine

Google's Earth by Nicholas Baker

The American Scholar

The Decline of the English Department by William M. Chase

The New York Times Magazine

Love in 2-D by Lisa Katayama

The weirdest trend story of the year.

ENTERPRISE JOURNALISM

The Atlantic

What Makes Us Happy? by Joshua Wolf Shenk

Is there a formulasome mix of love, work, and psychological adaptationfor a good life? says the subhead. For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human conditionand into the brilliant, complex mind of the study's longtime director.

Wired

Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish. Here's What Happened. by Even Ratfliff

PHOTOJOURNALISM

The Big Picture

The Sartorialist

DOGGEDNESS AWARD

Box Turtle Bulletin

Coverage of the Ugandan anti-homosexuality legislation.

MEDIA CRITICISM

This American Life

The Friendly Man Act II, The Friendly Man

Scott Carrier takes a job inside his profession, as a producer for a national commercial radio program, and catalogs the pressure he faces to turn in the kinds of stories Americans want to hear.

The Daily Show

Despite going after the right with more acuity and zeal than the left, Jon Stewart and his team of writers have no peers when it comes to exposing the absurdity of cable news networks.

Slate

Jack Shafer wins the year's most consistently good media critic award.

One Forty Plus

The Anatomy of a Smear: How The Reigning King of Special Effects Got Caught in One by John Mayer

Yes, that John Mayer. Weird, I know.

NONFICTION BOOKS

The Ballad of Abu Ghraib by Philip Gourevitch

Left seat Pilot Thomas Sonne; Right seat: Major Bill Tice.

Kandahar, Afghanistan
10 February 2010

American forces are stationed at bases far and wide around Afghanistan. Some bases are like towns, such as Camp Bastion, Kandahar Airfield, and Bagram Airfield. But mostly they are small, often occupied by only a handful of troops.

Logistics into Afghanistan is a nightmare, and it only gets worse after you cross the border from the North or from Pakistan. By comparison, Iraq logs was like a run to a convenience store down the road. Afghan logs are more like driving from Miami to Seattle for grocery shopping, and then driving the groceries back to Miami while under threat of attack. Not a speck of exaggeration in that statement. Enemy logs interdiction was a large constituent of the Soviet defeat, despite that the Soviet Union comprised the entire northern border of Afghanistan. When the Soviet hammer tried to crack the Afghan rock, the hammer shattered. The Soviets can easily put people in space and keep them there, but they couldn't handle backdoor logistics during their Afghan war. It's easier to keep people in space than to supply our war here.

Our Coalition is stunningly more effective at logistics than were the Soviets. For instance, when the British were resupplying small FOBs near Sangin last yearjust a short drive from the origin at Camp Bastionthe monthly convoys were major operations that drained needed combat power, and still vehicles were destroyed with casualties. So powerful are some of the bombs that they can launch the ultra-armored American MRAPs into the air, flipping them like turtles, often breaking the backs of soldiers. Even today, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is making moves to facilitate allies to get more counter-IED gear, such as MRAPs, which seems like a good move because some allies are risk-averse to the point of being ineffective (not that MRAPs are going to save them). By air, when a civilian helicopter was trying to resupply at Sangin, it was shot down just outside the base, killing the crew and at least one child on the ground. Make no mistake: this is a worthy enemy.

Without the U.S. Air Force, we would need thousands more troops here just to run convoys, and bringing in those troops would require more convoys to supply their needs. It's okay to use contractors to bring supplies in from Pakistan or from the north, but driving up into those mountains and other remote locations would be suicidal.

The United States Air Force invited me on a resupply mission, and when I showed up at 0400 to the trailer where the crew lives, one of their doors had been blown off the night before, leaving all else intact. Nobody knows what caused the door-ripping, though SSG Michael Jeffries was outside and said he got pounded in the face by gravel. Michael Jeffries said the winds were at least 60MPH and lasted only a few seconds. The pilots inside hit the deck. Anyway, Afghan mysteries aside, we drove to a chow hall, got breakfast to-go, and drove to the flightline.

The 772 Expetionary Airlift Squadron (EAS), from Little Rock, is comprised of elements from the 19th Airlift Wing, which they call the Black Knights. During January 2010 the 772 EAS conducted 119 missions in Afghanistan that comprised 454 sorties. That's a lot of convoys saved.

Today's mission would consist of six sorties. A sortie consists of a takeoff and landing, and hopefully the landing was controlled. We would fly from KAF to Shindand to unload supplies, pick up passengers, then fly back to KAF. That would be two sorties. The crew would pick up more supplies and passengers and fly to a small base in Farah Province, then back to KAF to pick up another load, then fly to Camp Bastion, then back to KAFmission completefor a total of six sorties. Arguably this could be called three missions, but the Air Force is conservative and calls it one mission. The pilots would not shut down the engines which would be running all day.

Before starting engines, Captain Thomas Sonne, the pilot, adjusted an oxygen mask and showed me how to use it. He handed over a Bose noise-cancellation headset, then plugged it into the comms and demonstrated how to adjust volume on several radios and the internal.

I asked Captain Sonne if we have enough C-130 lift in Afghanistan (knowing we don't have enough helicopters). Captain Sonne said we had enough C-130 liftnot extra capacity, but enough, which coincides with what others have said. Is the Haiti relief hurting us here? Captain Sonne confirmed what others have said: no, they can't feel the Haiti mission affecting our effort. Captain Sonne explained we are short on ramp space to park the aircraft, so they are busy building more ramp. This coincides with something General Petraeus told me in late 2008.

The pilot and copilot started through the strange checklist. The instrument panel showed we had 24,590 pounds of fuel. The weather was looking dicey for the landings on the rough airstrips, but takeoff would be easy, the pilots said. There were eight passengers and eight crew; three of the crew were FAST personnel (Flyaway Security Team) with body armor and weapons, and they would disembark on landing to guard the aircraft. Was good to have them along. Finally the crew got to the pre-taxi checklist. I understood a few words on this one:

Brakes.
Brakes clear.
Copy.

Captain Sonne was wearing night vision goggles while Major Tice, copilot, was going without. Captain Sonne's voice came over: We've got a 135,000-pound airplane, and then he looked back over his right shoulder at me, saying, If you have any questions, go ahead and I'll alert you if we are busy. Roger, I say in the microphone.

And now they are talking to each other again, We'll try to get up to 265 tactical, says Captain Sonne.

My pen was too slow, especially in the dark cockpit, but I got some snippets:

Pre-flight checks complete, says Major Tice.
Pressurized.
Roger.

They talk quickly, succinctly, all business, and rumble down the dark runaway and lift away, Gear's up. Gear's up. The flight computer has a female voice that commands attention, and she kept saying, Altitude, altitude, altitude, altitude, and then much later, the computer woman says, Thousand to go. This has to be about one of the coolest jobs in the military. As we roar into the sky, it occurs to me that a young person with brains and a sense of adventure would be crazy not to consider joining the Air Force. This is fun!

I ask through the headset if the HUDs are classified and if it's permissible to make photos so people at home can see. Captain Sonne and Major Tice said there is nothing classified. Have at it.

We descend into Shindand by first coming over the base, and doing a hard corkscrew down, wings sometimes tipped at 45 degrees, to avoid ground fire. The cockpit is armored against SAFIRE, but there are people in the back and it's never a good idea to get your airplane shot.

We come down to the skinny runway, apparently made for Russian figthers, some of which were sitting near the runway. The Taliban had gotten their hands on old aircraft years ago, and somehow got them flying. Today, Taliban Air Force consists of kites and carrier pigeons. I've photographed a kite in downtown Kandahar that was flying in the dark with a dim strobe. Was it a signal? The pilots intended to land at about 120 knots.

We landed and the pallets were removed by forklift, followed by the pax (passengers).

The crew had a couple of flags hanging in the back. The pilots said they fly flags on missions for people at home, and send each flag back with a little certificate.

More passengers were loaded up and we rumbled away at about 0730, and someone said from the back that a flock of birds was off to our right. After we were safely airborne, and the pilots finished their checklists, I asked about bird strikes. How high do bird strikes happen in Afghanistan? Major Tice had heard of a strike that occurred at over 20,000 feet. Everyone seems to have high regard for the C-130J. The pilots explain that older variants required six crew members, but the J only needs four. The Navigator and Engineer no longer are needed, and so this cuts one officer and one NCO, both of whom require much expensive training. A four-man crew beats a hundred-man convoy.

And that was it; we landed back at KAF, the first two sorties complete.

KAF doubles as a civilian airport with traffic including 747s. This is the civilian side of the terminal. We can't do a lot of top secret stuff on the airfield because civilian planes land every day and everyone can take photos.

Captain Sonne and Major Tice parked the airplane, left the motors running without the props turning, and while loadmasters re-loaded the C-130J, I got coffee.

We loaded back up and taxied to the runway for the second part of the mission: take supplies and pax to Farah Province. On the taxiway, we waited for this 747 to take off. ATC (Air Traffic Control) said something about a 747 heavy taking off. I asked the pilots what heavy means, and they answered that any aircraft weighing more than 250,000 pounds is considered heavy, and there are special rules at KAF for heavy. For instance, after he takes off, a truck must drive the runway to clear debris that the giant engines often blow onto the runway. The debris will not damage the C-130 (after all, they land on gravel airstrips), but a rock sucked inside an F-16 engine is a bad thing, and we don't want to see pilots ejecting off the end of the runway while one of our jets crashes in the desert. Another rule is that we have to wait for three minutes after a heavy takes off because the giant airplanes leave dangerous vortices that can cause us to crash.

While we rumbled toward the FOB in Farah, the pilots were curious about the ground war and I offered a few vignettes. There are thousands of wars going on here. Everyone's war is a snowflake.

As we approached the airstrip, the pilots put the nose down and we dived into the soup of clouds. The biggest threat in Afghanistan for fixed-wing pilots is terrain. It's easy to eat a huge mountain over here.

Flaps 50% please.
Roger.

Now over Farah and approaching the strip, we kept going down, down, down and the clouds were looking brown. Occasionally the clouds winked and we could spot the earth momentarily, until the instruments said we were a thousand feet up. The pilots could not see the ground. The ATC said visibility was less than two miles, and Captain Sonne said he could not see a half-mile ahead. A loadmaster called up saying he could barely see the ground at 1,000 feet. I just kept saying to myself, They know what they are doing. They know what they are doing. They know what they are doing. Captain Sonne reported we were getting some rain, and finally, at four miles out, he said Abort, and I drew a breath of relief and we climbed away. As we climbed out, Captain Sonne said, A little bit of rain, I'm going to switch back to weather.

We continued to climb away, when on another channel a pilot was talking to the ATC behind us. ATC crackled to the pilot, Runway unsafe to land. Report your intentions. Captain Sonne explained that the ATC can advise the pilot about unsafe conditions, but the decision to land rests with the pilot. The other pilot aborted. ATC called saying it could be 2-3 days before the sloppy runway was dry enough for safe landing.

The computer issued an alert about a fuel imbalance. Captain Sonne explained that in older C-130 variants, the flight engineer would have been aboard to monitor this, and then he explained some details about fuel balancing and why it's important to stay within constraints to maintain stability. He reached around to his left and pulled out a book, explaining the different sections. Some alarms were critical and could mean life and death, but this was just an alert to take care of some housekeeping. He read the procedure, which he probably already had memorized, and dialed four overhead knobs to redistribute the fuel, explaining each step.

We landed back at KAF and prepared for the sortie to Camp Bastion, but got a report that an aircraft had a problem on the runway, and so the Bastion runway was shut down and there was a delay. Meanwhile, a rocket attack occurred and so we ended up on the ground, and there was a nearby boom (maybe a few hundred meters or more). We wasted time in the bunker (somebody's rule up top) and the senior officer took inventory of his people, and finally the all-clear was sounded. We learned that the runway at Bastion was still closed. That was it. Mission was over. Not every mission goes perfectly, but then you can't control the weather, or acts of God. And in any case, this was seven doing the job of a hundred.

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Ben Zimmer on William Safire in his role as the NYT's On Language columnist:

For more than 30 years, in more than 1,300 crisp installments, Safire used this space to create a singular voice, that of the Language Maven, as he styled himself. We lost that voice last month, but we are left with a rich and varied legacy that shaped how Americans talk about talk.

When Safire died and I wrote that he was one of my favorite writers and columnists, I got a slew of complaints from left-leaning DF readers. How could I say such good things about a man who, among other things, so strongly supported George W. Bush's disastrous invasion of Iraq?

Here's the thing. I didn't read his op-ed column because I agreed with him; I read it because I didn't agree with him. Though I seldom agreed with his politics (and when I did, it was in favor of individual privacy and liberty), Safire was always thoughtful and his writing always playful. I feel it's important to read the opinions of those with whom you tend to disagree, politically or otherwise.

But even if your politics and constitution are such that you could not abide his op-ed column, I don't see how anyone who loves U.S. English didn't cherish his Sunday On Language column as the national treasure that it was. 30 years! And he kicked ass until the very end.

Stop thinking that you are such an incredibly wide-ranging thinker with so many interests and insights that you cannot be pinned down to just one topic. The top bloggers are all wide-ranging thinkers. That's why they are interesting. The more information and angles you can draw from, the more interesting your insights are.

I challenge you to think of a popular blogger who lacks focus on their blog.

In the history of writing, everything has a focus. It's a contract you have with the reader. You stay within the bounds of the reader's expectations, and if you do that, you can write surprises that seem to stray from your topic, and the reader stays with you. Because surprises are fun. But if there's no contract because there is no focus, then there are no surprises. Every great piece of writing works this way.

Think about it: Canterbury Tales. The topic is getting to the end of the trip. Or Moby Dick. Melville can write about everythingGod, the American dream, fishing boats, marriage, mental illnessand he gets away with it because his topic is totally solid: Nailing the whale.

I challenge you to find a great piece of writing with no topic.

Even columnists stick to their focus. It's part of the fun. When you audition for a print-based column, you submit ten sample columns to show that you can be interesting in a variety of ways while still sticking to the main topic. Because it's hard to do.

You can write about any topic, but you have to link it to your focus. Look at my how-to posts. Most of them are only tangentially about how to do some career thing. Most of them are actually about something else. That's why they are interesting.

Look my blog: Do you need me to tell you to use bullets instead of paragraphs on your resume? No. Do you need me to tell you to stand up when you do a phone interview? No. Because there are 400 other writers who will tell you that. So I need to do something else.

But I can only get you to read me if you come knowing what you expect. So I always relate what I'm writing to careers. Sometimes, it's easy. I knew I wanted to write about my bed bug trauma. And I knew, quickly, that it was also about financial stress, which is, of course, a topic that's fair-game in the career world.

Sometimes you just need a little patience: I knew for years that I wanted to write about abortion. I listen to Brick, by Ben Folds 5 all the time, and I love his contribution to the discussion about abortion. I wanted to make a contribution like his, but I couldn't relate it to careers. Until I could. And then I wrote it.

Please do not tell me that you are just going to write whatever you want and you don't care who reads it, or if anyone reads it. You are lying to yourself. Of course you care. We each have a limited amount of time in our lives, and blogging takes some of that time. Your blog is not your journal. Believe me. I know. Ive been keeping a journal since I was five. I have seventy-five volumes of handwritten journals, and it is totally different than blogging because it's not public. The nature of a blog is that you are choosing to write publicly, so it is, by definition, for other people to read.

So, show some respect for people and pick a topic.

Also, show some respect for yourself. There are so many benefits you earn from blogging that do not require tons of pageviews. Here's a list of them. Mostly, the list is driven by being known for what you are good at. But for that to work you need to know what you're aiming for. What do you want people to know you for? Where do you want to go next? Answering those two questions is what will inform your blog topic and give you the focus for your blog.

Don't tell me you can't decide. Everyone knows where they want to go next. Even if it's probably wrong, you know, right now, where you're leaning. So write to that. Sure, it might change, but you need to commit to something, right now. Each day you have to wake up and do something. So you have to guess where to aim. We are all just guessing. Make your best guess and keep going in that direction until you find something else. And your blog is an expression of that commitment to yourself to have direction, even as you doubt it.

Columnist and conservative speechwriter William Safire died yesterday at age 79. Here is the speech he drafted for president Nixon to read in the event that Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong found themselves stranded to die on the moon. I am happy to note that Messrs. Aldrin and Armstrong are all still alive (as is Michael Collins, who orbited the moon while his colleagues walked on her surface). William Safire's Finest Speech. (Gawker, via Scott Beale)

Columnist and presidential speechwriter Bill Safire was one of only three non-disloyal Jews President Nixon could name. Here is the speech he drafted for Nixon to read in case the Apollo 11 Astronauts became stranded on the moon!

It is a wonderful piece of alternate universe American history, in which President Nixon had to explain to a nation that Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were going to die on the moon.

Morton Janklow remembers his lifelong friend, William Safire:

Bill brought a surprising contrarian perspective, grounded in conservatism in the true sense of that word. A civil rights advocate, a staunch defender of the right of privacy and human rights around the world, and an outspoken critic of governmental efforts to infringe upon those rights, Bill was, at the same time, cautious about political and social change and hawkish in his attitude about America's role, including its military role, in the post-World War II era.

Here's JPod's summary:

He was a patriot, an American nationalist, a Zionist, a civil libertarian, and a classic Washington type of a sort that has now almost entirely passed from the scene.

I loved reading him on the nanny state, the First Amendment, the pretensions of left-liberalism, and his love of actual life in all its humdrum variety. I confess to finding his writing style sometimes unbearably cute, but there was great mischief in his provocations, and his back-and-forth with readers on language was, in some ways, a fore-runner of the blogosphere. He lacked pretension as a journalist when New York Times hauteur was at its peak.

But when the subject turned to Israel, the tone shifted dramatically.

It wasn't his Zionism or defense of successive Israeli governments, or his right-of-the-Likud stance that troubled me. It was the assumption of the most extreme views of Jewish and Israeli vulnerability as if they were inarguably the only positions a non-anti-Semite could take. Maybe that's why the New York Times obit made no mention at all of his life-long defense of Israel. Were they embarrassed by it? Or did it seem routine?

With this passionate exception, Charles Murray's tribute to Safire (and Buckley and Kristol) is on point, even as I think he overlooks Kristol's latter day cynicism and movementitis:

The comparisons with the voices of the Right today are unavoidable (The Left's no better, but they're not for me to worry about). There are many exceptions in print and some on radio and television. But who got on the cover of Time magazine the same week as Irving died? Glenn Beck, sticking his tongue out. He and others like him comprise far too much of the public face of the Right todaycrudely sarcastic when they are not being angry, mean-spirited, and often embarrassingly ignorant. The antithesis of Friedman, Buckley, and Kristol.

I expect to be told that I'm too squeamish. We're in a battle for America's soul at a pivotal moment. But the very truth of that statementwe are indeed in a battle for America's soulmakes it a good idea to stop and think about when the American Right was truly influential. It didn't start after right-wing talk shows got big. It started in the 1960s, as Friedman, Buckley, and Kristol were hitting their stride. It flowered in the 1970s, then reached its apogee in the 1980s when their ideas were given political force by Ronald Reagananother man of civility, good humor, and optimism. Don't tell me that we have to put up with the Glenn Becks of the world to be successful.

So another Bush bashing book is out (at least in excerpt) and the Bushie loyalists are again charging the airwaves and the Internet to defend GWB. Just as we saw with Scott McClellan, they'll define Latimer as a doofus, out of the loop, in over his head, not as important as he thinks. (Which, of course, begs the question why the Administration excelled at hiring the incompetent and the self-important. Didn't they have a screening process?)

I have read the excerpts of Latimer's book and frankly don't find all that much wrong with it. I'll likely buy the book and consume it all simply because I liked the way the excerpts were written. His publisher is right. He has an engaging style. Was he in the room or across the street at the EEOB? Who cares. He was clearly closer to the President than 99.9% of Americans will ever get in their life, so let him have his say. We might find it interesting.

The treatment Latimer has received in the last 36 hours, however, has left me perplexed. It reminded me a lot of McClellan's welcoming reception and that reminded me of something Peggy Noonan wrote.

William Safire, himself a memoirist of the Nixon years, said to me, a future memoirist of the Reagan years: The one thing history needs more of is first-person testimony. History needs data, detail, portraits, information; it needs eyewitness. I was there, this is what I saw. History will sift through, consider and try in its own way to produce something approximating truth.In that sense one should always say of memoirs of those who hold or have held power: More, please.

Noonan, and by extension Safire, were spot on. I think that every White House staffer should not be discouraged, but rather should be required to write a book, and tell the story of their time there. Our history demands that those making it (whether the President or his secretary) should provide us with as much detail as possible. When these books are written we should not denounce the writer, we should simply ask for the next installment from the guy who sat next to Latimer so we could see how he remembered the events.

One of the most interesting conversations I have ever had was with the woman who sat next to Monica Lewinsky in the White House. She once gave me her take on the woman behind the blue dress and it meant more to me than any ABC News special report.

Do I buy the caricature of Latimer as an opportunist trying to parlay his brush with fame into a financial windfall? Absolutely. Do I also believe that much of what he says is probably exactly as he remembers it? Absolutely.

That's why we need more of these books, not less. We need to be able to compare notes and make our own determination about what happened, who these people were, where they made mistakes and where they proved they were only human.

Now, the latest to weigh in against Latimer in protecting the Bush years is James Carville.

This little dweeb needs to be glove slapped People that have the honor of working in the White House ought not be going out and publishing this

I couldn't disagree with Carville more.

The people that need to be glove slapped are Carville and his ilk for attempting to silence future tomes. If Dana Perino, Tony Fratto, or Ed Gillespie recall events differently, let them write a book and give us their take. By the time all the ink dries, we might have a semi-complete picture of life inside the GWB administration.