Slate (magazine)

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Image:Slate screenshot -- (21 Nov 2004).png Slate is an online news and culture magazine created by Microsoft in 1996 as part of MSN. On December 21, 2004, it was bought by The Washington Post Company.

Former political correspondent Jacob Weisberg is the current editor and the Washington Post Company's Cliff Sloan is publisher [1]. The founding editor was Michael Kinsley.

Like Salon.com, it covers politics, arts and culture, sports, and news. Slate is a hybrid of traditional news outlets and blogs; it is column-driven but maintains more journalistic credibility and objectivity than most blogs.

Slate features regular and semi-regular columns such as Explainer, Chatterbox, and Dear Prudence. Many of the articles tend to be short and relatively lighthearted pieces. There are also many meta-columns: collection and analysis of major newspapers, magazines, blogs, and the like. It has a number of associated blogs, including some of the most notable on the Internet, such as the Kausfiles. It also features regular weeklong series of diaries from interesting people and a link to each day's Doonesbury, whose website Slate hosts.

Slate contributes to the National Public Radio show Day to Day.

A pioneer of the digital world, many credit Slate.com with helping to create the blogosphere. Commentator Mickey Kaus's column "Kausfiles" is seen as one of the earliest blogs.

Slate also features a set of online forum boards called "The Fray," the editing and moderator duties of which are left up to a "Fray Editor," currently Kevin Arnovitz.

In March, 1998, Slate attracted considerable notice by charging a $19.95 annual subscription fee. Less than a year later, in February, 1999, the site dropped the charge and returned to free content, citing both sluggish subscription sales but also increased advertising revenue.

On July 15, 2005, Slate began offering a podcast, featuring selected stories from the website read by Slate editor Andy Bowers.

In September, 2005, it was announced that Michael Kinsley would once again return to Slate, writing a weekly column to be published simultaneously in Slate and the Washington Post.

1 Editorial stance
2 Contributors/Departments
3 Other notable contributors
4 References

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Editorial stance

Slate's focus and editorial slant is politically liberal, as seen in choice of columnists, choice of topics, position on topics, and featured cartoon: Doonesbury. During the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, Slate staff and contributors made a poll among themselves, and a significant majority supported Democratic challenger John Kerry [2].

A more fine-grained analysis puts Slate slightly to the left of The New Republic, but still to the right of Salon.com or The Nation. It includes many voices of the Clintonian / Democratic Leadership Council / neo-liberal point of view. These include two of its bloggers: Mickey Kaus, whose favorite subjects include welfare reform and the potential for a future candidate from either party to reap major political gains by taking a law-and-order stance on immigration issues; and Bruce Reed, who was President Clinton's domestic policy adviser, and is current president of the Democratic Leadership Council. Jack Shafer, one of its top editors, has stated that he has voted for the Libertarian Party candidate for president in every election since he became eligible to vote. (One unusual feature of the magazine is that it very openly states its staff's biases, going so far as to publish the presidential votes of individual staff members and writers.) Slate frequently publishes columns that advocate a libertarian view of economics.

On the occupation of Iraq, Slate has taken a "liberal hawk" perspective. This viewpoint is embodied in the frequent contributions of Christopher Hitchens, William Saletan, Michael Kinsley and others. Timothy Noah is the only Slate staffer who opposed the US invasion, and even he was persuaded to abandon his relatively dovish position by Colin Powell, as he documented in Chatterbox Goes to War.

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