I closed comments a few years ago, when we received a lot of spam as well as comments I didn’t want to publish. There are better spam protections now and I enjoy debate. Those of you who follow the Atlantic Sentinel know I am concerned about the future of liberal democracy, which I believe is under attack from the left, by social-justice fanatics, and the right, by authoritarians and reactionaries. The remedy isn’t cancel culture or ostracism, but engaging in a free and frank exchange of views, in good faith, and being willing to listen.

If I believe that, I ought to practice what I preach. Read more “Comments Are Back”

I’ve been experimenting with a new format to share news and links: daily roundups of the most important stories from Europe and North America, usually with links to analysis and opinion elsewhere. Follow the News tag to find the latest installments. Read more “Introducing Transatlantic News and Opinion Roundups”

Regular readers will know by now I can’t help but tinker with the website every one or two months.

My goal is always to make the site as minimalistic as possible without hurting usability: draw your eye to the content but have all the tools you need to navigate at your fingertips. I think this update does that. Read more “New Sidebar, More Minimalistic Layout”

You’ll notice there have been a few design changes. Most are small: the formatting of the meta data and widget titles is a little different; the author bio has been replaced with a simpler — and what I think is a more elegant — byline.

The biggest change is in the sidebar, where you can now find links to the latest articles about France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. I hope that will let you more easily find the stories you are looking for.

As always, I welcome your feedback! If you have any criticisms or suggestions, please leave them in the comments.

There have been a few changes at the Atlantic Sentinel lately.

If you look between the title and content of an article, you will notice the author name is now preceded by the type of post: usually analysis, news or opinion; in this case, info. In WordPress-speak, these are our categories.

At the bottom of the article, you’ll find the tags. These are usually countries or individuals, for example, France and Emmanuel Macron.

Between those two levels, there are certain transnational issues we keep coming back to. Europe’s culture war is one. The future of social democracy is another. I’ve chosen to put these in the navigation bar at the top of the website. These are the topics I want the Atlantic Sentinel to be about and putting them front and center signals that to the reader and is also a reminder to myself of which stories to cover and which to leave to others. Read more “New Taxonomy, New Navigation and Editor’s View”