Denis Dutton founded Arts and Letters Daily in 1998. I believe that when I launched “Great Questions of Economics,” the blog that preceded EconLog, I cited ALdaily as one of my influences. I cannot find where I wrote that, but I dug up this, which is a collection of the web sites that I was following ten years ago.

Dutton injected a playful humor into his posts. I doubt that his successors will be able to quite live up to his delightfulness.