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Washington Post Buys Slate From Microsoft
securitas writes "The Washington Post has bought online magazine Slate from Microsoft for an undisclosed sum believed to be in the millions of dollars. The sale comes almost five months after Microsoft put Slate on the block (Slashdot) in late July. If you're looking for a perspective from someone other than Slate's editor Jacob Weisberg, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz writes about the sale: 'According to ComScore Media Metrix, washingtonpost.com drew 4.5 million unique visitors last month, while Slate drew 4.8 million.' David Carr reports in the New York Times that Neilsen NetRatings recorded 6 million Slate visitors last month. Either way, Slate's audience is larger than the Post's online edition. You can learn more about the deal from AP via IHT or get streaming audio at NPR (Real|Windows Media)."
Didn't slate run a pro-linux story a while back? ... Coincidence, I think not.
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
Just by that statement it's clear you're buying right into that same allusion that Time Warner ran into. There is no "old media." Newspapers, magazines, television, radio. They're still around.
Yes, the bloggers are "new" and they're having some influence, but conduct a survey of most news oriented bloggers and I'll lay odds you'll find they're the biggest readers on the mainstream media out there.
The WashPost is no straggler in the online world. They have lots of figure out, but they're far ahead of all but a few major news sites.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
The old media is nearly useless these days - corrupt and driven by greed, spin and fear. I don't have any faith in new media though because the truth doesn't naturally win out - the story that is accepted is that which has the best presentation and most nearly matches what the hearer wants to be true.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Slate, Salon, etc have all been displaced by blogs which are a much better venue for partisan punditry.
Can you accept that OSS/GPL/Linux/OS X users can form indepent opinions about OSS/GPL/Linux/OS X or Microsoft?
Another factual correction: Newsweek is not own by Microsoft. And rather than throwing baseless accusation on how Newsweek is influenced by Microsoft? Any evidence?
You're under the mistaken impression that the media sells news. No, I'm not being faecetious.
Actually, the media sells people. You, the reader, are not their customer -- you are their product. Advertisers are their customers. The cost of printing newspapers (which typically sell for 25-35 cents for daily in the US) is not even remotely covered by their retail value. Once, perhaps, but not today.
You just don't understand their motivation. Adverts on-line and adverts on dead trees both do the same thing -- on-line adverts might be even better, because they're much more dynamic (but perhaps also easily blocked).
Anyway, think about it.
I read slate for 4 reasons.
Cagle's political cartoon agregator. I can read 50 different political cartoons in about 10 minutes.
Explainer is awesome.. it actually addresses the questions that most paper's gloss over (like that story about Insulin usage in the olympics.. Explainer was the only place I'd seen that actually explained *why* athletes would even want to use insulin)
In Today's Papers is a great way to see what the lead stories are in the washington post, nytimes, latimes, and other places.
Ad watch.. reviewing television ads.. brilliant!
There is no "old media." Newspapers, magazines, television, radio. They're still around.
Sure, they're still around.. but I work for a newspaper, and there is definitely a digital divide. Few in the newsroom think our website is even worth keeping up-to-date.
We wanted them to classify stories based on content, to make it easier to search online, and to dynamically build interesting sections. No one "gets it" in the newsroom. They still classify stories based on the section their beat runs in. Their mind is still fully "I work for the metro desk, all my stories are metro stories, what more do you need to know?"
Anyways, our publisher (Pulitzer) is about to sell. We'll see if the new boss is the same as the old boss.