The End of Evans-Novak
My friend Tim Carney took over the 42-year-old Evans-Novak Political Report after its chief author, Robert Novak, fell ill late last year. (Co-founder Rowland Evans died in 2001.) Carney has some bad news for subscribers.
“„Next week’s will be the final issue. After Novak’s illness forced his retirement, the reins were handed over to me. With the personnel changes and the market changes, Eagle has decided to retire the publication.
Carney had a tough job at the end of the Bush era: Being honest and reporting the facts about Republican electoral chances. As over-optimistic as the Report could be sometimes (see its final pre-election forecast), just compare it to the A-block of Sean Hannity’s radio show, or an editorial in The Weekly Standard, or an episode of the Beltway Boys. But in the age of RealClearPolitics and InTrade and (sigh) PajamasMedia, there was no market for blunt, just-the-facts political analysis. And a conservative media organ, launched during the Lyndon Johnson presidency, comes to an end.
