I've had 3X the number of 100+ comment diaries as you have.

You're Jack Morris to my Bert Blyleven.

Valuable writing skills for the business world:

• Fill space when you have nothing worthwhile to say.
• Make yourself appear more knowledgeable than you really are (without the hassle of actually learning anything).
• Convince your reader to believe an idea that you know is actually false.
• Appear to answer a question without really answering it.
• Trick the reader into thinking you said one thing when you really said something else.
• Come out looking like the winner of an argument, even when your position is wrong.

School is where we learn these skills.

The new new AN will tarp off the lower-rated diaries.

And you'll have to drive your car to Fremont to log on. None of this free proximity to publicly funded/developed infrastructure.

My objection is not with you Nico, but with the job description itself.

I understand that it doesn't fit the business model, but I'd rather you write three columns on any day where you have three worthwhile things to say, and zero columns on a day where you have none.

But I know that's not very helpful. Two bits of advice I'd give to the columnist who is obliged to meet a schedule:

First, don't sign up for a schedule that exceeds how much you have to say. If you have an average of ten column-worthy thoughts per week, then you'll be OK writing four columns a week. If you have an average of three column-worthy thoughts per week, then you'll probably run into trouble writing two columns per week. Either you have a lot to say or you don't. If you aren't constantly abandoning subpar ideas because there's no room for them, then I think you've got too much space to fill.

Second, take notice of which columns are just as interesting next week as they are this week, and keep a supply of those on file to use during the weeks when you don't have anything new to say.

That second suggestion works a lot better if you're not tied to a context where the relevance of an idea expires quickly.  My personal solution to that is just to eschew all such contexts. I adhere firmly and quixotically to the belief that anything that isn't still worth talking about a week from now, probably wasn't worth talking about in the first place. That's why I hate the news, and it's why I'm more likely to watch C-Span than CNN.

I realize this theory doesn't work so well for baseball, and of course I also realize I'm way out on the fringes for believing such a thing. Even so, I wonder if the news industry wouldn't be well served by a little more of my attitude. Take the presidential campaign, for example. The question of who would make a better president is just as interesting a month from now as it is today. The question of why so-and-so jumped five points in poll X in state Y will be trivial and stupid a month from now, and that ought to be a hint to the news desk that it's trivial and stupid right now, too. But which question do all the reporters write about?

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