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Washington Post Buys Slate From Microsoft

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the it's-easy-and-it's-required dept.

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)."

15 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Who reads Slate by upsidedown_duck · · Score: 3, Interesting


    I could never accept that Slate had genuine editorial independence from Microsoft. It's like MSNBC, Newsweek (I think), MSN, etc. that are all owned or influenced my Microsoft, and it's all very likely part of a grand marketing strategy.

    Microsoft putting their brand on something is like a poison pill for credibility.

    --
    -- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
    1. Re:Who reads Slate by aengblom · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I could never accept that Slate had genuine editorial independence from Microsoft.

      And yet Slate does and did have that independence. Perhaps one should judge a book by it's content and not its cover.

      P.S. Newsweek is actually owned by The Washington Post Co.. MSNBC.com does provide the online site for the magazine, but it controls no content -- except the occasional online exclusive multimedia production.

      --


      So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
  2. I mostly agree. They are both too corporatist by Cryofan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With a few exceptions both the Post and Slate revealed themselves to me as CorpGovMedia mouthpieces during the run-up and aftermath of the Iraq war. That really opened my eyes. So, I couldn't really care less if they both went under....

    --
    eat shiat and bark at the moon
  3. Instant hipness? by Hawthorne01 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sorry, Washington Post, but buying Slate does NOT mean you get the "New Media", anymore than Pathfinder meant that Time-Warner got it. The citizen-journalists of the blogsphere are where journalism is heading. There's a million fact-checkers out there, and the Old Media better wake up to it, or be cast aside.

    --
    "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
    1. Re:Instant hipness? by garcia · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The old media is nearly useless these days - corrupt and driven by greed, spin and fear.

      You neglect to mention that bloggers are just as greedy, full of spin, and willing to be either for the "fear" or diametrically opposed to it.

      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.

      Sorry but I just don't trust the bloggers at all. Most of the time they are full of shit and break "stories" that are nothing more than trash.

      I read "new media" with a grain of salt and pour over stories from several outlets. After that you might get a better representation of what actually happened before it was filtered through the various outlets (including the government).

    2. Re:Instant hipness? by miu · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Maybe I didn't make it clear that I don't trust the bloggers either. A "citizen journalist" has none of the restraints of the traditional journalists profession, because of that they can feel completely justified in using deceit and logical fallacies to convince their audience. I don't think of it quite so much as "everyone can be a reporter and fact checker" as "everyone can be a propagandist and shill".

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      [Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
  4. Sounds like a bad deal by Dynedain · · Score: 2, Interesting

    washingtonpost.com drew 4.5 million unique visitors last month, while Slate drew 4.8 million....Either way, Slate's audience is larger than the Post's online edition.

    And how much of that slate traffic is caused because slate is so tied in to MSN which is the default startpage for 90% of the home computer market?

    I have a strong suspicion that if slate is divorced from MS, its readership will decline drastically.

    --
    I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
  5. good for the WP by jonpublic · · Score: 2, Interesting

    i find slate extremely helpful, between the explainers to todays papers. some of it can be quite silly, but the majority of the content is excellent stuff. i've been checking out the washington post lately because of slate. they have quite a bit of helpful information that you don't find anywhere else, and they seem to carry full stories. if i want to find out what is actually going on and the motivations for that, i read the post. hopefully they can bring more of that to slate and slate can give them a bigger online audience.

  6. Re:Slate & WP == Neoliberal Propaganda Machine by TheOriginalRevdoc · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Neoliberal? Corporatist? What is this, political buzzword bingo?

    It sounds to me like you just don't want to read anything that contradicts your world view. That puts you in the same general area as Bill O'reilly fans.

  7. Re:Slate & WP == Neoliberal Propaganda Machine by Stormwatch · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Strangely, here in Brazil people say "neoliberal" meaning "one who defends an unregulated capitalism" - a la my favorite writer, Ayn Rand.

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    Circumcision is child abuse.
  8. Re:Slate & WP == Neoliberal Propaganda Machine by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1, Interesting

    No, those are political terms that actually *mean* something. When you tune them out, because you're propagandized into distrusting people who tell the uncooked truth about neoliberalism and corporatism, it is *you* who puts the blinders on yourself, like the O'Riled zombies. And the "irony" (perversion) of your charging Cryofan with exactly that, when he's doing the opposite, yet you are doing it yourself instead, makes me wonder if you're not O'Reilly itself, trolling Slashdot with a falafel.

    --

    --
    make install -not war

  9. Re:Next... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    That depends. From what I can gather Comscore Media Metrix is salesman code for "Marketscore spyware".

    If it is using Marketscore spyware to work this out then they really only have a certain percentage of the population stupid enough to use thier spyware and thier figures are reached by extrapolating what they do know over a large population. How many /. users do you think would be infected by Marketscore as opposed to the general public.

    I hate Comscore.

    I really do.

  10. How many visitors do independent blogs get? by Caseyscrib · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm curious as to how many visitors independent news sites get, including sites like slashdot, fark, democracynow, kuro5hin, etc. Is it anywhere close to the 4.5-4.8 million slate and Washington post get, or do most people just think "getting their news online" means going to cnn.com?

  11. Pathfinder's Bab5 boards by identity0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Jesus, I thought I was the only one that remembered Pathfinder. For those that don't know, Pathfinder was Time-Warner's attempt to create a service similar to AOL or CompuServe's portals, but on the web without a dial-up service. This was before they got swallowed up by AOL, way back in the early 90's. Apparently, they decided to lump everything owned by them under the "Pathfinder" name, from CNN to Loony Tunes to Babylon 5. It was a disaster, from most accounts.

    I was a regular on their Babylon 5 forum, and to this day I have great memories of the people there, and I prefer that board's layout to others like Slashcode and UBB. Unfortunately, Time-Warner basically thought of the boards as a place to get free PR and marketing, and their management of the boards was pretty poor.

    The admins did not do much to try to foster a community, and they often seemed to be fighting with the users. I remember they would occasionally delete some sections, and force changess on the board with no warning. It was like the whole BB system was just a forgotten corner of the T-W empire, and we were tossed about by high-level decisions of their marketing dept. The whole board ended up closing with short notice before the end of season 4, I believe. That's when I discovered the joys of Usenet and rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated, but that's another story...

    Anyone here from the old Pathfinder Bab5 boards? I was ZoqFotPik, and that was my first BBS...

  12. Re:Not Funny: "Washington Post" Site Blocked in Ch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Can we have a new moderation, (-1 Gratuitous anti-China slam)? You post something like this for every single article.