Garth Turner's fevered imaginings notwithstanding, it was Andrew Coyne who did more to make the web the method of choice for intelligent political debate than anyone else. His blog (version 2) was where I got my real taste for what could be done online, and what inspired me to try it on my own.

Though no doubt Andrew is grateful for my praise, it is so much better when people who really matter recognize his talent. Andrew Coyne has left the National Post to become the new National Editor at Maclean's magazine:

This is to tell everyone who hasn’t heard that I am leaving the National Post to become National Editor of Maclean's magazine. I start next week.

I leave the Post with great reluctance, and not a little heartache. I was one of the original “Posties,” and anyone who was there at the beginning will know what emotions well up at the thought of those times. We were all unspeakably young (well, some younger than others), all hand-picked for the job, and all of us unable to believe our good fortune: to work with the best writers and the best editors and the best designers, to be allowed to break all the rules of what a newspaper should do and say and look like, and to get away with it -- to put out a paper that was as good as anything anywhere in the world, and to do it here.

But every now and then you have to shake things up, and try something new, and the opportunity Maclean’s presented was simply too good to pass up. I have always wanted to try my hand at editing, and having only ever worked in newspapers, am eager to see what the magazine side of the business looks like. And what a place to start: Maclean’s is an established title, with all the strength that brings, and yet one that is in the process of reinventing itself, with the fluidity that suggests. Under my old boss Ken Whyte, it has put together a first-rate bunch of writers and editors, and it just sounds like something that would be a lot of fun to be involved in.

Congratulations to Andrew Coyne and best of luck. Don't forget us little people. I'm off to see if Andrew's job at the National Post is still open.