Lobelog to be absorbed into the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft Inbox x

Lobelog to be absorbed into the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

Dear LobeLog Contributor:

I don’t know if many of you have heard about the creation of a new think tank called the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, or the “Quincy Institute” (or “QI”) for short, but this is to inform you that LobeLog will be absorbed into the institute and rebranded as “responsiblestatecraft.org” on or about November 1. I’m letting you know now because The Nation is supposed to have what its reporter described as this “scoop” on its website and in its next edition to be published Monday. I didn’t want you to be surprised by this development.

For those of you who haven’t heard about the Quincy Institute, its forthcoming launch was made public in an article by Stephen Kinzer in the Boston Globe at the end of last month and subsequently favorably commented on by, among others, Dan Drezner and Katrina vanden Heuvel in the Washington Post, and by Bill Kristol, who, predictably, didn’t like the idea. Much of the commentary to date has focused on the strange bedfellows – George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the Charles Koch Institute – that are funding it, which is a little misleading since there are a number of other foundations and private individuals that are supporting the initiative, including the three foundations that have made LobeLog possible: the Ploughshares Fund, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Arca Foundation. Which is one important reason that I’m comfortable with the funding situation and any possible strings that others may presume are attached to their support.

The motivation behind the institute is to provide a platform for various ideological factions – progressive realists (with whom I personally tend to identify), more mainstream foreign-policy realists, and libertarians – that have long expressed skepticism of, serious concern with and/or opposition to U.S. imperial hubris and the militarization of Washington’s foreign policy, and have thus argued for restraint, modesty, and far more reliance on diplomacy in U.S. relations with the world, especially in the Greater Middle East. While that region will be a major focus of its initial work, the institute also intends to address U.S. policy and its implications in other parts of the world, notably East and South Asia and Europe (although Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa are not to be excluded). The institute is currently in the process of interviewing and hiring experts for full-time staff positions, as well as a managing editor for Responsible Statecraft. (For more information about employment opportunities, you are invited to visit its website at https://quincyinst.org/.)

Co-founders of the institute include Andrew Bacevich, president; Suzanne DiMaggio, chair; Trita Parsi, founder and former president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC); Stephen Wertheim of Columbia University; and Nation Institute Fellow Eli Clifton who, as many of you know, has worked closely with me for well over a decade both at the DC bureau of Inter Press Service and at LobeLog (which is another reason I’m comfortable with the latter’s impending reincarnation). This core ensemble has consulted with a much broader group of organizations and individuals during much of the past year both with respect to developing the Quincy Institute’s mission and founding principles and in organizing and fund-raising in the most effective ways possible. 

You may ask what are the implications for LobeLog and your relationship to it. Well, the most important reason why the institute wishes to take over the blog is because the founders believe that LobeLog has proved to be the foreign-policy platform that currently offers the range of views and expertise that best articulates their own and that, with the blog’s existing contributors, responsiblestatecraft.org can essentially hit the ground running (although the institute’s yet-to-be-hired regional and issue experts will also be expected to write for the new site). In other words, writers and experts who have contributed to LobeLog will be very much in demand at the Quincy Institute site at roughly the same tempo as in the recent past. Moreover, because of the institute’s substantially greater resources, contributors will likely be compensated at a markedly higher (and long-overdue) rate, although the precise amount has yet to be fully negotiated. In addition, the new platform will continue to crosspost items from other websites and organizations, such as +972mag, Eurasianet.org, the Iran Project, the International Crisis Group, and tomdispatch.com, subject to their agreement. Finally, as with LobeLog, I will serve as the editorial director of Responsible Statecraft and thus will be working very closely with the managing editor.

Of course, there will be differences, the most important of which is the fact that the institute will address itself to a broader range of regions and issues than LobeLog has. But this will not come at the expense of the number of original posts and crossposts  (an average of about 2.5 daily) that LobeLog has featured in the last few years. Another difference will likely be the appearance of shorter posts, particularly in the form of rapid-response pieces that can be written and published quickly in reaction to particularly objectionable statements or influential opeds by administration officials, members of Congress, or other hawkish individuals or organizations promoting aggressively interventionist and/or militarist policies. (LobeLog posts have normally run between 800 and 1,200 words, although we have far exceeded the upper limit when the subject warrants such treatment. Shorter posts could run as few as 350 words and may be compensated at a different rate than LobeLog’s more traditional pieces.)

As for LobeLog itself, it is likely to be maintained as a static site, but you can be assured that all articles and their respective URLs will remain intact after the transition to Responsible Statecraft. The more than 7,000 that have been published between LobeLog’s inception in 2007 and this past weekend (as well as other content between now and the transition), will almost certainly be imported into the new platform’s site in their entirety with each post indicating that it was originally published on LobeLog. In other words, your work will not be thrust down an oubliette of history; it will remain publicly available and easily accessible. 

I hope this answers most of the questions that may occur to you. If you have others, please don’t hesitate to contact me at my ipswas@igc.org email.

I would also like to take this occasion to thank you for your many contributions. If you didn’t know already, they helped LobeLog gain national and international recognition over its 12-year lifetime. In 2015, for example, LobeLog was honored to receive the American Academy of Diplomacy’s prestigious Arthur Ross Award for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis of Foreign Affairs, the only weblog to ever have achieved that distinction. LobeLog was also named as the “Site of the Month” by The Foreign Service Journal, the publication of the American Foreign Service Association. 

LobeLog’s viewership has grown steadily over the years and has recently spiked to unprecedented levels. In 2014, for example, the site attracted an average of 1,900 pageviews daily, according to Google Analytics. By 2018, that number had reached around 4,000. In the last six months, the site has attracted an average of 6,860 pageviews, and in the last three months, the daily average has rocketed to nearly 9,000. (Unfortunately, viewership often correlates with crisis, most recently the rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran.) It might also be of interest to note that viewers based in the Greater Middle East have become by far the fastest growing regional source of visitors and currently account for about 25% of all visitors to the site. This is a remarkable accomplishment for a weblog that has never been able to afford a half-time, let alone a full-time staff member. And the credit belongs to all of you, as well as to our more-than-generous funders at Ploughshares, Rockefeller Brothers, and Arca.

It has been great working with all of you at LobeLog, and I sincerely hope that relationship will continue after its reincarnation as part of the Quincy Institute initiative and Responsible Statecraft. Again, if you have any questions, please don’t be shy.

All the best,

Jim Lobe