First, the bad news. MSNBC has terminated its relationship with Eric Alterman, writer of its best blog, Altercation.

The good news: Altercation will be moving to Media Matters, where Eric will be a senior fellow.

Update your bookmarks, the new Altercation will be here, starting Sept. 18.

When I started TalkLeft in 2002, Altercation was one of my favorite blogs. Eric was gracious enough to link to it early on. After that, he let me help select and update the list of bloggers on his blogroll and guest write Altercation numerous times when he was out of town, which I continued to do through this summer.

I suspect the higher-ups at MSNBC want to limit themselves to blogs by their tv anchors, reporters and political analysts, in hopes that they can internally feed viewers and readers to each other. There's nothing wrong with that, but still, MSNBC is losing its most independent and provacative voice, and for that I'm sad.

On the other hand, kudos to Media Matters for having the foresight and wisdom to add Eric to their ever-growing team.