In the newest issue of Vanity Fair, the most awesome magazine in the world, we find this, in Michael Wolff's article about Politico.

Likewise, there is Ben Smith. Smith is 32, lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children (with a third about to be born), and is, too, a total dweeb. His blog, which he started at The New York Observer, then moved to the Daily News, and then to Politico, is another new journalism model. It has a sense of extreme autodidacticism, a kind of focus and relentlessness and unavoidability that, through sheer immediacy and constancy, forces everybody to acknowledge it—and to deal with and talk to Smith. Smith ends up being the only one as interested in what his sources are doing as they themselves are. He’s made himself his subjects’ soulmate. During the campaign, there was hardly anyone in a senior position with any of the candidates who wasn’t one of Smith’s I.M. buddies.

So let me break a lance for my friend Ben. I haven't seen him since I ran into him at City Hall for the big Joe Mesi press conference last year, when he walked up and gave me a hug. That's the secret to Ben's success, other than the fact that he has the best sources in blogdom and a gift for hitting his points exactly; the guy's genuinely nice.

In semi-related news, do you know who reads Vanity Fair these days, religiously? New York Progressive bloggers, that's who; unbearably sophisticated bunch that we are.