ArticleIP_2209.txt

   
   
      
         
            Justice Department Settlement

            
               Justice
Department Settlement
            

            In settlement of a dispute
with the Justice Department, 
                  Slate
                has agreed to discontinue
"bundling" its Back of the Book with the rest of the magazine. We take this
opportunity to inform our readers that they are under no obligation to read the
music or movie reviews, or to follow the gardening column, or to listen to the
poem, in order to consume the news and political analysis. Subscribers to 
                  Slate on Paper
                who wish to receive a
culture-free edition, with all the reviews and other artsy-fartsy stuff sliced
out at no extra charge, can e-mail us at [email protected], and we'll be
happy to oblige.

            It was the Justice
Department's position in this controversy that a magazine of news analysis and
a review of culture are two fundamentally different products, and that

                  Slate
               's merging of the two was a subtle effort to foist culture
on an unwilling political readership. It was 
                  Slate
               's position
that the typical 
                  Slate
                reader is highly educated, civic-minded,
intellectually curious, culturally sensitive--also brave, debonair, and
sweet-smelling--and that these admirable qualities are intertwined, leading
each of our readers to value a wide variety of 
                  Slate
                offerings.
"The so-called 'front' and 'back' parts of 
                  Slate
                are as
inseparable as Windows 95 and Internet Explorer 4.0," declared

                  Slate
                publisher Rogers Weed. "And everybody knows you can't get
more inseparable than that."

            In such situations we like
to ask ourselves, what would Lakshmi Gopalkrishnan have done? Lakshmi is

                  Slate
               's co-managing editor and, as it happens, her office is just
down the hall, so the easy thing would have been to go and ask her. But the
easy thing is not always the right thing. And our decades of
combined experience as newspaper and magazine journalists tell us that the
right thing is to speculate. We speculate that Lakshmi would have wanted
us to settle. So we settled.

            In
response to 
                  Slate
               's concessions, Attorney General Reno personally
agreed to drop a demand that 
                  Slate
                review more mystery novels
and, in the language of the DOJ brief, "get rid of that fool Weisberg with all
deliberate speed."

            
               Fresh
Blood
            

            Michael Lewis joins

                  Slate
                this week as a regular columnist. Michael's first book,
Liar's Poker , a description of his life at Salomon Brothers, is the
definitive account of the 1980s on Wall Street. His most recent book, Trail
Fever , is a highly idiosyncratic and entertaining account of the 1996
election. The words "entertaining" and "1996 election" don't sit easily
together, but take our word for it. Or, better yet, buy
the book.

            For

                  Slate
               , Michael will be engaged in a yearlong project to update
William Whyte's The Organization Man , the classic book about the
business culture of the 1950s. He will be filing dispatches weekly, from his
base in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, and we hope they will add up to an
equally compelling portrait of the business culture of the 1990s. Michael's
first column will appear Tuesday, Oct. 28 (or thereabouts).

            
               Welcome
to America Online
            

            A hearty
welcome--or "HWELLLLL-kum," as AOL puts it--to our new readers from America
Online. 
                  Slate
                is scheduled to take up residence Monday, Oct. 27,
as an anchor tenant on AOL's news-channel newsstand. Of course

                  Slate
                continues to be available on MSN and directly on the Web at
slate.com.

            
               And for
America Offline ...
            

            There is
yet another new way to read 
                  Slate
               , or at least a part of it. The

                  Slate
                "Briefing" Channel is open for business on Microsoft
Internet Explorer 4.0. (Download IE4 here if you want.
Or--yes, fine, OK--download the latest version of Netscape Navigator here.) The 
                  Slate
                "Briefing" Channel is an automatic
daily download of new material from 
                  Slate
               's Briefing section
("Today's Papers," "The Week/The Spin," "Summary Judgment," "In Other
Magazines," etc.). If you've installed Internet Explorer 4.0, click here for more about (and
a chance to download) the channel.

            
               And for
You Netscape Users ...
            

            We love you too.

                  Slate
                and Netscape have agreed in principle for

                  Slate
                to join Netscape Navigator's Inbox Direct program, which
delivers Web pages directly to your e-mail inbox. Coming soon.

            

               --Michael Kinsley