"There is a perception that this odd colony of bloggers and journalists and blogger-journalists and journalist-bloggers is cynical, that it is jaded, that it only wants to tear down and carp. This is the literal opposite of the truth. Those that are left, those who learned and adapted and kept trudging forward, they are the dreamers—they are, at heart, the most painfully earnest people you could ever meet. That spirit, in my opinion, is perhaps best exemplified by this very site, the one you’re reading. It would have been easy to quit, to knock this shit off, to start getting serious. Instead: There was this, a daily prance through the sad and the beautiful, the ridiculous and the divine, the Philistine and the transcendent. I see The Awl and I see those stupid 1999 kids, hoping to elbow their way toward a spot at the table before realizing, fuck it, let’s just build our own table. It means it’s still out there. It means people are still trying. It’s worth hanging on to. It always was."
