Back in October, I reported that Atlantic Media had hired Michael Kinsley, the Slate founder and all-purpose genius, to develop and launch a business-news site. The site is still coming along, but Kinsley, it turns out, won't be its editor. The search is on for someone to replace him, Kinsley confirms to DailyFinance."We're going to get an editor for this thing who will really be devoted to fast-breaking news and analysis of business issues, and I'm still helping with it, certainly, until we find that new editor," says Kinsley, speaking from the company's office in Washington, D.C. "It's still all very vague."

Kinsley says that he and Justin Smith, who was recently promoted to president of Atlantic Media, agreed that he was not the man for the job. "I'm not obsessed with business," he says. "I sort of looked into my soul, and Justin Smith looked into my soul, and we both sort of decided that I really didn't want to do that."

Whoever succeeds him, he says, will likely come from more of a traditional business-journalism background, while Kinsley will indulge his generalist's mind by working across other areas, including The Atlantic Wire, the company's newish opinion-aggregation site.

Since announcing plans to introduce the site, Atlantic Media has pushed the launch date back from January to this spring. After hiring Reuters veteran Adam Pasick to serve as managing editor, the staffing process was put on hold awaiting the naming of a new top editor, Kinsley says: "There aren't going to be that many, so we didn't want to use up any of the slots."