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Slate is an online news and culture magazine created in 1996 by former The New Republic editor Michael Kinsley and owned by Microsoft (as part of MSN). On December 21, 2004, it was purchased by the Washington Post Company. Slate is updated frequently; current and archived content is free for all users.

Former political correspondent Jacob Weisberg is the current editor and the Washington Post Company's Cliff Sloan is Slate's publisher.*

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 frequent week-long diary series 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 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. It was one of the first non-pornographic media sites to attempt a subscription-based business model. The scheme proved to be a financial disaster; 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 site 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.

Editorial stance

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

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 / neoliberal 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 explicitly 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 neoclassical view of economics, for example articles by professors Paul Krugman, Stephen Landsbury, and Tim Harford, who although perhaps classifiable as liberal, are still part of the economic establishment and have each done significant research work.

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 U.S. invasion, and even he was persuaded to abandon his relatively dovish position by Colin Powell, as he documented in Chatterbox Goes to War.

Contributors/Departments

Other notable contributors

References

1996 establishments | The Washington Post | Websites | Webzines

Slate (Magazin)

 

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