Nobody is going to fire him anymore.

Ta-Nehisi Coates.

At 37, Mr. Coates is the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States. His Atlantic essays, guest columns for The New York Times and blog posts are defined by a distinct blend of eloquence, authenticity and nuance. And he has been picking up fans in very high places.

Fans like Rachel Maddow, who tweeted: “Don’t know, if in US commentary, there is a more beautiful writer than Ta-Nehisi Coates.” The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg described him as “one of the most elegant and sharp observers of race in America,” when announcing that Mr. Coates had won the 2012 prize for commentary from The Sidney Hillman Foundation. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, who recently hosted a book reading at MIT with Mr. Coates, a visiting professor at the school, said that “he is as fine a nonfiction writer as anyone working today.”

Without a Ph.D., Mr. Coates is an uncommon visiting professor at MIT. In fact, he doesn’t even have a college degree, having dropped out of Howard University, failing both British and American literature. Before that, he failed 11th-grade English.

“If you had told me he would be a big deal, I would have said, ‘Get real,’” said Times media critic David Carr. Mr. Coates’s first writing gig was at the Washington City Paper, where Mr. Carr was his editor. “He needed work. He was not a great speller. He wasn’t terrific with names. And he wasn’t all that ambitious.”

Indeed, it was an inauspicious beginning.

The article that launched Mr. Coates toward stardom, his first for The Atlantic, came on the heels of his departure from Time. In that piece, “This Is How We Lost to the White Man,” Mr. Coates situated Bill Cosby’s attention-getting criticisms of black men within the tradition of African-American self-help conservatism championed by Booker T. Washington.

Published in 2008, the article was well-received and eventually included in the collection Best African American Essays 2010. And yet, it almost was never printed. Mr. Coates had started working on the piece the previous year, when he was at Time, and it was rejected by several publications before Mr. Coates asked Mr. Carr if he knew of a home for it. The Atlantic editor James Bennet was receptive.

“I’m very grateful to both those guys,” said Mr. Coates, who was inked to a blog deal by The Atlantic soon after the article came out, “but it shows the power of that networking. I couldn’t help notice that it was one well-placed white dude talking to another well-placed white dude to get it published.”

Ideas about race and racial identity have always been with Mr. Coates. He was introduced to the writing world by his father, a former Black Panther and Vietnam vet who ran an Afrocentric publishing house out of the family’s home in West Baltimore. “I was surrounded by books and ideas. We literally had the machinery for creating books in our basement,” said Mr. Coates, who is tall but carries himself casually. (In his Atlantic author photo, he sports thick black-framed glasses and a driving cap, which is what he wore on the day we met as well.)

The printing press existed alongside the geek paraphernalia that Mr. Coates constantly mentions in his writing—video games, comic books and Dungeons & Dragons are among his obsessions. Mr. Coates’s writings are also filled with anecdotes and lessons extracted from his time spent in an urban reality most American journalists know only from watching season four of The Wire (which was actually filmed at Mr. Coates’s old school, William H. Lemmel Middle). In this way, he finds relevant insights into debates that are mere abstraction for so many other pundits.

Of course, growing up in difficult circumstances doesn’t inherently confer wisdom. In another writer’s hands, the constant invocation of childhood adversity would seem like a ham-handed attempt to assert credibility. But Mr. Coates’s talent is a lottery-ticket-rare ability to both reveal his personal life and seem extraordinarily humble. He also has a disarming habit of smiling as he speaks.

Once, when confronted by the conservative Daily News columnist John McWhorter about something mean-spirited Mr. Coates had written about him, Mr. Coates immediately apologized, saying, “It was tremendously unkind.”

Mr. McWhorter was taken aback by the honesty. “I wasn’t expecting that,” he admitted.

And while it must be said that Mr. Coates’s memoir, The Beautiful Struggle, fails in pulling off the delicate balance between remembrance and braggadocio, the book does advance a theme that has underscored much of his work—that the dismissal of hip-hop as merely “a symbol of the decline of the West if ever there was one,” as the National Review recently argued, is only a subtler form of the same lazy ignorance that runs through centuries of racist stereotypes of young black men.

“I learned about writing from hip-hop,” he said. “More than any books I’ve ever read, hip-hop’s use of language and sense of geography influenced me—there is something about the condensed space that music forces you into.”

Nelson Fernandez, Jim Fallows, Ta-Nehisi Coates.

But he is no music critic. Mr. Coates’s writing about hip-hop is normally a segue into his main subject: race. In a February Times column, he suggested the White House study the rapper Kendrick Lamar’s new album as a way to understand the effects of gun violence, among the most unlikely public policy proposals of recent years. But Mr. Coates bristles at suggestions that race is his beat. “I think I write about America, and about things that interest me,” he told The Observer.

When The Village Voice asked Mr. Coates to write a column about black men, he objected. “The moment you put that upon yourself—‘black correspondent’—that’s always with you, you never get rid of that,” he said.

Still, racial issues are what Mr. Coates writes about most, and what he is best known for. Everything Mr. Coates has written for The Atlantic’s print magazine, for which he serves as senior editor, has regarded race in one form or another.

Perhaps his best-known piece is a 10,000-word article called “Fear of a Black President,” about Barack Obama’s inability to mention race without alienating white voters. It snakes through the importance of Mr. Obama’s presidency for African-Americans while showing the limitations of that achievement. The article “had the kind of impact for which magazines hunger,” wrote a blogger at Harvard’s Neiman Foundation.

For Mr. Coates, the job of the writer, even the pundit, is not to persuade. “The job of the writer should be one of humility, I think, one of being ignorant and learning—not to stand up and pretend to know everything,” he said. “I’m not a consultant or a race expert.”

Indeed, Mr. Coates is particularly anxious about being seen as some kind of black spokesman. And even Stephen Colbert poked fun at this idea when, in January, Mr. Coates appeared on The Colbert Report and the host asked him: “Are you guys still all excited about this first black president thing, or have you gotten over that?”

Mr. Coates says he is uninspired by the emails he receives telling him how his writing has helped someone win an argument. “That ain’t my burden. I don’t write to help others with their racism, and I’m not here to educate you,” he said. “I’m here to be insanely curious.”

It’s not hard to see how Mr. Coates’s sphere of influence has grown along with his outsized online community. Some even say he has redefined the blogging form. “There’s really nobody else who does what he does, in terms of creating a community of people around his blog,” said Mr. Carr. “He does a ton of moderating that blog and putting in time with it, and it’s become a self-policing community, which is really remarkable. He goes where he wants to go, and the community goes along with him.”

According to Natalie Raabe, communications director for The Atlantic, it has “by far the most engaged community in our comments section.”

If Mr. Coates is notable for popping into his own comments section to praise or criticize posters, it’s because he has a distinct vision of blogging. “It is its own space; it’s not the entire web—there are plenty of places to go if you want to do other things,” he said. He gestures to the establishment we’re in. “This is an individual place—if you started yelling in here or screaming that they need to be serving chicken if they don’t want to, they’d kick you out. They have the right to be their own spot.”

And yet the blog might end soon. “Managing a community is tough,” Mr. Coates admitted, adding that he’d like to be able to just be a fan of things without feeling the need to constantly comment. “I’m leery of talking too much—I feel like I need to sit with an idea for a year or two if I want. Isn’t that what a writer’s supposed to do?”

Mr. Coates is currently finishing a novel on the Underground Railroad and will soon be submitting to a publisher a book of essays about the Civil War, a subject he has been infatuated with on his blog for five years.

And blog or no blog, Mr. Coates is likely staying at The Atlantic. The Times asked him to become a regular columnist, but Mr. Coates rejected the most coveted real estate in American journalism. He would not comment on the matter, but recently wrote on his blog about the difficulties of writing a twice-a-week Times op-ed column. He suggested that he would be taxed writing so frequently at such length, and feared his writing would suffer.

“I won’t go so far as to say I’d fail,” he wrote. “But I strongly suspect that the same people who were convinced this would be a perfect marriage, would—inside of a year—be tweeting, ‘Remember when that dude could actually write?’” Of course, that humility is exactly what makes readers want to see Mr. Coates on the op-ed page twice a week. The fact is, wherever he writes next, the man has arrived.

I, Roger.

Fox News chief Roger Ailes is trying to get that paper. Elsewhere in News Corp, two locals go all Benedict Arnold on a certain tablet newspaper and a certain tabloid newspaper. What's it like to get an employee evaluation at Reuters? How's that whole Media-and-Race thing going? All that and more in your Thursday Evening Media Briefs.

Roger, Dodger: Fox News chief Roger Ailes is renegotiating his contract according to Fox News' least-favorite journalist, New York contributor Gabriel Sherman (who's working on a book about the network). Some things you probably didn't know:

1. Ailes' personal lawyer appears as a Fox News contributor. Synergy, now!
2. If he were to leave Fox News, Ailes possibly wants to buy the Cleveland Indians, thus fulfilling his destiny as the real-life basis for the villainous owner in the next Major League movie.

And onto the numbers we go (emphasis ours):

One source familiar with the talks speculated that, given Fox's record profits, Ailes could ask for a mega deal, worth more than $30 million per year. But another source close to Ailes explained that, for Ailes, signing a new deal is not only about the money. Ailes has to figure out what he wants to do next. But money is surely a consideration: Ailes is a guy who likes to keep score. And at News Corp., he's the third-highest-paid executive, behind Rupert Murdoch and COO Chase Carey. This week, it was announced Ailes made $21.1 million last year. With Fox News on track to earn $1 billion in profit, it's certain Ailes would want the biggest contract of his life.

Sherman makes an excellent point that—in light of News Corp's restructuring in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal—Fox News is a more crucial piece of the Fox pie now more than ever. Know this: Whatever Ailes' deal ends up being, it's likely going to say far more about how Rupert Murdoch intends leaving this planet than what Roger Ailes has done on it. Sherman's wonderfully juicy report is worth clicking over for the read. Do it. [Daily Intel]

The Murdoch-to-Mort Refugee Trail: Capital New York reports that the thoroughfare of employment between News Corp and the New York Daily News remains trafficked, as always. This week, it's the copy chief at The Daily—Jon Blackwell —who's off to the Daily News as a deputy managing editor for production. Apparently, he was with News Corp for over ten years, much of which was spent on the copy desk at the New York Post. Meanwhile, Don Kaplan—on the Metro desk at the Post, and previously their TV writer—is also off to the Daily News as their new TV writer. [Capital New York]

Media Employment and Race: The More Things Change, Pt. XXVIII. The Atlantic's Ta -Nehisi Coates pens a wonderful thinker on the diversity problem in the media business, which yes, absolutely still exists (to wit: look around you). As he put it:

Magazines have long had a diversity problem, and that diversity problem is inscribed in their DNA. You can add on to this the fact that the traditional way of breaking into magazines involve ways utterly inaccessible to most black people. The unpaid internship was long seen as a right of passage. Very few Americans can afford such a luxury, and fewer still African-Americans can afford it.

What's It Like To Be Probed/Evaluated For Your Worth at Reuters? Just let this marinate for a moment:

One correspondent was told that he doesn’t use enough pronouns in his writing when they couldn’t find anything else wrong with him.

The only thing less dignified than being taken out back and Old Yeller-ed because you're old is having someone come up with soft euphemisms, and past that, boldfaced lies about why they're doing it. [Jim Romenesko]  

The Boys, On The Wrong Bus. Today, in amusing corrections:

An earlier version of this story suggested an earlier report had mentioned a bus tour, which it did not.

[Buzzfeed]

The Boys On The Bender: Resident MSNBC delicate flower Chris Hayes needs sleep. At midnight. [@chrislhayes]

License to Jill: New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson —the first woman in the paper's history to have the job—made some Vanity Fair power list, which is great, except somehow she dropped a ranking and is less important than Jay-Z and Beyonce (who the Times uses in their ads). This reporter remains mystified at the fact that Graydon Carter once had something to do with Spy and also wide-eyed at his reverence towards celebrities, which—we've been here long enough, we shouldn't be surprised—we're slightly ashamed of. [Vanity Fair]

WaPo Wha-Wha? If you can explain what's happening in this Washington Post filing—or at the Washington Post, period—in three sentences or less, The Observer will send you a pastry* of your choosing. [Washington Post]

[*Pastry subject to avaliblity.]

- - -

That's it for tonight. Give us your shady, your sketchy, your salacious media gossip. Or tips on making a paper crane army with very little effort. We're still after that one.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

The noted television pundits were discussing Alaska Governer Sarah Palin's comments about the press as well as about bloggers from the up-coming issue of Esquire, in which she called them," Bored, anonymous, pathetic bloggers who lie annoy me."

Here's a transcript of the chat per Mr. Yglesias:

As The Atlantic's Mr. Coates quipped, "Yes that crack reporter Pat Buchanan..."

But Mr. Barnicle, on the other hand, surely knows the difference between bloggers who just "get off" and real pavement-pounding journalists. He was, according to his own Web site, a columnist for The Boston Herald, The New York Daily News, and The Boston Globe for whom wrote "4,000 columns collectively."

His bio doesn't mention, however, that he's been accused repeatedly of being a plagiarist and a fabricator. In April 1998, Salon's Tom Mashberg reported that Mr. Barnicle was busted for repurposing parts of George Carlin's book Brain Droppings in a column without crediting his source. Mr. Barnicle told reporters at the time that he was "sloppy" and "lazy" but insisted he hadn't read Mr. Carlin's book.

Mr. Mashberg recounted seven other instances of Mr. Barnicle ripping off other writers (including legends like A.J. Liebling and Mike Royko) and writing about persons whom Boston Magazine—which enlisted the help of a private investigator—could not find.

Writing about Mr. Barnicle's hiring at The Daily News in March 1999, The New York Times' Felicity Barringer quoted an anonymous News editor saying, "there is a large body of opinion that worries that having an alleged plagiarist on the staff is not the smartest thing for our paper to do."

So, hey, when it comes to knowing the rules of journalism—and how bloggers just don't play 'em—Mike Barnicle knows. Mike Barnicle wrote the book on journalistic ethics, okay.

At least we think he did.