Brave New World

This is an important announcement about the future of zzzeitgeist.

We have just witnessed what will likely be one of the most important political moments of our lifetime. The people have spoken, the old order has been blown away, and change is coming. President-elect Obama faces enormous challenges both at home and abroad, and the policy decisions he makes will have repercussions around the world. In short, things are about to get even more interesting.

And as we stand on the cusp of a new era, we have news of our own to share. Both of us have come to realize two things in writing this blog. First,while we both understood that international issues are nuanced and complex, we have increasingly realized that there are many sub-issues within international political economy and development that warrant close attention. Some of these are beyond our expertise. Second, we have been consistently amazed at how intelligent our readers around the world have been, and your thought-provoking feedback has helped drive the blog. Given these facts, we've concluded that we have a unique opportunity to deliver even more insightful commentary on the issues our readers care about.

So we're happy to announce that as of today, zzzeitgeist will begin moving toward a collaborative model. Both of us (Nick and Patrick) will still post regularly, but we will assume a more editorial role and focus more on steering the ship and plotting the overall direction of the blog. At the same time, we are recruiting specialists who will provide analysis on issues as diverse as military security, finance, and global health. We are building a broad network of contributors, each of whom we hope will bring a special expertise to zzzeitgeist. As editors, we will work hard to connect the dots between our specialists.

Our goal is no less than to give readers a robust picture of everything relating to international political economy and development, from a source they can trust. We want to be one of your top sources of news and analysis. And consistent with a founding principle of this blog, we are committed to providing a platform for young and up-and-coming voices in these disciplines. We want our contributors to provide an edgy and fresh look at the issues.

As our new model is implemented, you can expect more posts on new and old issue areas, with the same quality analysis that we've worked to provide up until now. We will post updates about the administrative changes we make as we make them (we're working on several new features right now). Things will grow slowly, but if they go to plan, changes should be noticeable soon: we hope to have 3 - 5 contributors by the end of November.

It's a new world, and we are really excited about our new "blog by committee." We look forward to adding to the debate in critical times.

- Nick and Patrick