We're at bit late to this, but it looks like New York Magazine's blog Daily Intel has finally capitulated to the byline. Up until August, when the change took place, Daily Intel posts by staff bloggers (contributors were always name-checked) remained unsigned — a source of frustration for regular readers (us, for example), particularly in this age of the commentariat, where the reader tends to identify with the writer as much as the writing. Daily Intel has been a bit of a hold out in this sense, — Gawker started bylining in March of '07, and as the MSM increasing encroaches on the online world non-bylined entries have become a thing of the past. We asked nymag.com's managing editor Jessica Coen about the change:

We added bylines to those other posts to make it clear who had written them.

Now a reader or commenter might directly address the author of a post rather than some vague editorial identity, but it doesn't change how any of us approach an item. We're as openly precocious as we've always been.

But what do the writers think? We caught up with Daily Intel's (and Gossip Girl expert) Jessica Pressler:

I'd say it's bittersweet. We're happy to be recognized for the good things we write as individuals, but now when we write something dumb or thoughtless, we can no longer pretend to others or ourselves that it was the other person that did it. For me especially this is a terrible loss. Chris is probably delighted to not have to answer questions about his Julian Schnabel obsession.

Other than that I guess it's not that different, the bylines are tiny for one and Daily Intel is still very much a "We" blog, because Chris and I have in a lot of ways melded into the same person, that's going to be more difficult to shake.