I've seen several other journalists/bloggers/media-people react to this news as if Andrew's decision was clearly driven by structural economic factors rather than a more benign desire to step away from blogging as his primary form of writing. Ben Smith--of, yes, Buzzfeed--seemed to interpret this as the death knell of independent internet commentary.

What's going on here? I think we can agree we're all sad Andrew Sullivan is quitting The Dish, but are we symbolically sad over what that blog represented which will now never exist again, or are we just sad that a pretty great blogger won't be blogging any more?