It’s a big happy pleasure to welcome Robert Birnbaum to The Morning News as our newest Contributing Writer. We’ve been reading his great long interviews on Identitytheory.com for some time, and we’re now lucky enough to say he’ll be sharing some of them with us, at least until he (or his tape recorder) burns out.

(If you love reading, then you’ll want to dig into Identity Theory if you haven’t done so already, they have tons of great features besides Robert’s interviews.)

Robert lives in New Hampshire, works in Boston, has a dog named Rosie and drives a convertible Porsche with a single piece of luggage always strapped to the back, one suitcase full of underwear, dog food, and the latest Martin Amis book. One of those things is not true. He and I have corresponded for a long time by email and letters, and to this day we have never met nor talked on the phone; this probably will not change. Also, Robert’s long and decorated career in publishing and journalism may help us someday as TMN grows, that is should Nick Denton decide to untie his bondage girdles from New York’s venture capitol/S&M/big media community.

(Nothing in this last sentence is true at all, except the bit about Robert; we have no plans of pursuing VCs, and though Nick may be into S&M, last I heard it mostly involved Jason Calacanis and a well-used rubber ball.)

So welcome Robert. You can read more about him on our Masthead or browse his past articles on TMN. And if you haven’t read it yet, his most recent interview, with Anne Garrels, is a gripping, beautifully candid piece on Iraq and war reporting.

Yours yours yours,
Rosecrans