I CALLED UP Brian Anderson yesterday to ask him a few questions about his forthcoming book, South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias.

Anderson is a senior editor at City Journal. He’s typical of an increasingly influential type of journalist, the full-time, on-staff, journal journalist who, paid by a think tank like the Manhattan Institute or the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has the time and space to work on policy articles for months at a time before having to pull the trigger on a finished piece. The result is a densely fortified style of reporting and argumentation that puts to shame mainstream journalism’s call-and-quote product. Anderson’s City Journal colleague, Heather Mac Donald, is another fine example of the breed, as are, from the younger set, the writers over at the New Atlantis, a journal of technology edited by STANDARD contributor Eric Cohen.