If you are a regular reader of the blog Hot Air, you will notice something different if you stop by this morning. The Green Room, which used to appear as a feature beneath the site’s “Headlines,” is gone. It’s actually been in the process of going for some time. In the days following publication of the last Green Room entry, on March 14, the listings for that department were attenuated to two titles, down from a once more robust eight. At a time further removed, the GR was so content-heavy as to have a column of its own, along the right side of the front page.
If you’re not a fan of Hot Air, you’re probably wondering why I’m devoting all the syllables to a presumably rival enterprise, so I’ll explain. Liberty Unyielding is, in a sense, a child of Hot Air, and more specifically the Green Room. The five founders of LU — J.E. Dyer, Libby Sternberg, Dustin Siggins, Fausta Wertz, and yours truly — are all Green Room expatriates. Ditto for Mike Antonucci, Jeff Dunetz, and Amy Lutz, who have joined us since as contributors.
Similarly, some of the regular readers and commenters here are veterans of the Green Room during its halcyon days. I won’t name names for fear of omitting someone, but you know who you are.
In October 2012, Salem Communications, which bought Hot Air from Michelle Malkin, decided to repurpose the Green Room, staffing it with the front page crew at Hot Air and columnists from Townhall, another Salem property. Two months later LU was born. Fittingly, when Ed Morrissey wrote a short congratulatory piece, alerting readers of the new startup, he did so via the Green Room.
In my own farewell GR column, I expressed some sadness at leaving but speculated little about the future of the Green Room, presuming it would continue to thrive under its new content managers.
Apparently it didn’t. So long, GR. We hardly knew ye.
