Now that the event has concluded, I can reveal why I came to Washington DC tonight. The Week Magazine selected me as Blogger of the Year for 2005, following in the footsteps of my friends from Power Line, who won the honor last year. The magazine flew me out here earlier today and put me up at an excellent hotel, and then brought me to the Andrew Mellon Auditorium for dinner and the presentation.

The announcement has not been posted at their site yet, but the story that garnered the most attention of the judges was the Adscam scandal in Canada and my coverage of the testimony during the Gomery hearings. The Week also had kind words for the overall effort at CQ even outside of that story. I have the dead-tree version of the article, but as soon as it's posted at The Week, I'll link back to it. Nor was I the only recipient of The Week's honors in opinion journalism. Nick Kristof won for his columns on the Darfur crisis and Mike Luckovich won for his editorial cartoons. I have been a fan of Mike's for years, with his witty take on the issues of the day, and I rode over to the dinner with Nick and had an opportunity to talk to him a bit about his efforts in getting the world to notice the genocide in Darfur. We were joined by Michael Massing, who sat on a panel discussion after dinner about White House correspondents.

Mark Tapscott and Jonathan Last joined me for the dinner and presentation, giving me an opportunity to meet my Weekly Standard editor for the first time. Paul Mirengoff from Power Line was on hand to pass the baton, as it were. I also finally got a chance to meet John Aravosis and Joe Sudbay from Americablog, and they made for great company during the predinner drinks. Arianna Huffington was there and joined Michael Massing on the panel, as did Tony Blankley from the Washington Times. Tony made a point to tell me how much he enjoys the blog.

I didn't speak at the event, which probably was for the best. Margaret Carlson from Time gave me a splendid introduction, the most generous of the three introductions despite having just met me for the first time about two minutes earlier. Unfortunately, with the plethora of Michaels back stage -- Luckovich, Massing, Mike McCurry -- she wound up referring to me as Michael Morrissey several times, leading Tony Blankley to ask if "Michael Morrissey" was any relation to Ed Morrissey. Poor Margaret was mortified when one of the event organizers whispered what she said when we came off stage, but after eating the delicious dinner and dessert and soaking up the company at the event, she could have called me Saddam and it probably wouldn't have registered.

And of course, Mark and Jonathan could not resist congratulating "Michael" when I returned to my seat.

It was a lovely evening, and although I wish I could have stayed in town to catch up with my friends here, I have to return home tomorrow morning. Blogging will almost certainly be light tomorrow as I have a tight travel schedule, but the trip was well worth it. I never did get a chance to thank The Week at the event, but they were so kind and generous in their arrangements for me that I would be remiss to let it go without thanking them here.

It's wonderful to be recognized alongside Nick Kristof and Mike Luckovich, but now the nose must get back to the grindstone.

UPDATE: Paul adds his thoughts and congratulations, and gives an excellent account of the panel discussion.

UPDATE II: My friend Brian at Fraters Libertas guessed wrong: "In Washington DC for an event, what could that be? My guess would have been the keynote address at a Free Cynthia McKinney Rally." Nope, Brian, I had to miss that one to attend the dinner, but life is full of small cruelties like that ...

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry is