Umbrella Policy
Umbrella
Policy
Looking for a tasteful yet
exciting gift, suitable for all occasions? For under 20 bucks? Please consider
a gift subscription to
Slate
, available beginning this week. Your
beneficiaries will be impressed with your cleverness and sophistication (which
is, after all, the whole point of giving), and they will never suspect that so
much wonderful journalism was procured for only $19.95. Click here for
more information or to send a gift subscription.
Like a
regular
Slate
subscription, a one-year gift subscription also
entitles the subscriber to an attractive
Slate
-logo umbrella.
This is a $19.95 value in and of itself, we allege. Why have we "bundled" an
umbrella with a subscription to
Slate
? Many people--some of them
wielding subpoenas--have asked us this question. The answer is simple: We do
not see the umbrella and the subscription to
Slate
online
magazine as two separate products. The umbrella is fully integrated into
Slate
. (Or possibly
Slate
is integrated into the
umbrella. One or the other.) To bar us, as some have suggested, from including
the umbrella with
Slate
would effectively mean that anyone who
chooses to read
Slate
outdoors would risk serious water damage to
his or her computer.
It is charged (by knee-jerk
Slate
haters and
paid apologists for our rivals) that by including a free umbrella with each
subscription to
Slate
, we are attempting to extend our current
dominant position in online poetry-read-aloud into the market for umbrellas,
thereby stifling innovation in this crucial field. Simple mathematics disposes
of this canard. If the umbrella is worth $19.95 (which we say it is--and
Stephen Glass does not work here), and if a subscription to
Slate
with a fully integrated umbrella is also $19.95, then it is obviously
Slate
, not the umbrella, that is being given away free. And
nobody in his right mind would put at risk a monopoly as lucrative as the one
we have on
Slate
-logo umbrellas by trying to extend it into the
challenging market for online magazines.
To borrow
an image from our corporate parent, Microsoft, we reserve the right to
integrate a ham sandwich into a subscription to
Slate
if we wish.
As a matter of fact, a ham sandwich goes very well with some of
Slate
's features. What could be nicer than sitting under an
umbrella, munching a ham sandwich, and reading Michael Lewis' latest
"Millionerds" column or one of Emily Yoffe's dispatches from the world of the
tabloids? To forbid
Slate
to innovate by incorporating useful new
features in our product would put us at an unfair disadvantage vis-à-vis other
Webzines. Salon , for example, is already full of baloney. (Oh, please.
Only joshing.)
Afunny little man from the Justice Department was skulking
around
Slate
the other day, hinting that DOJ's effort to force
Microsoft to include Netscape Navigator in every copy of Windows 98 is just a
warm-up. The government's real goal, he revealed, is to "level the playing
field" by forcing us to include Time and Newsweek in every
edition of
Slate
. Our chairman, Bill Gates, has said that this
kind of suggestion is like requiring Coke to include three cans of Pepsi in
every six-pack. That analogy has stirred much discussion about its validity.
Our own view, if you're wondering, is that the analogy is brilliantly acute and
totally disposes of the issue in the minds of all honest and clear-thinking
people. But the uncomfortable truth is that
Slate
already
incorporates Time and Newsweek --in our department called
"In Other
Magazines." The result, as the Justice Department would have predicted, is
a robustly competitive magazine market in which Time and Newsweek
actually, in some ways, surpass
Slate
. Circulation, revenue, ad
pages, and profitability are a few of the dimensions in which, quite frankly,
we are somewhat behind, although we lead in other important measures such as
number of readers with
Slate
-logo umbrellas.
"The
Fray" Enters the Fray
One of our most loyal and
enthusiastic Fraygrants--
Slate
speak for subscribers who are
active in our discussion forum, the Fray--goes under the nom de clavier
of Irving Snodgrass. "Irving" is an American who lives in Jakarta and has been
regaling the Fray with tales of life in the heart of the Indonesian revolution.
At last report he was more or less trapped in his house, so he's had plenty of
time to spend at www.slate.com. (Come to think of it, Americans trapped by political
turmoil in distant lands are a great potential market for
Slate
--provided they're trapped in a place with a working
computer and modem. They won't need umbrellas, of course. Circulation
Department, please note.) Enter the Fray, read Irving's dispatches, and maybe
send him a message of support. The thread is called "The
International Scene," and Irving's posts begin at entry No. 6718, several days prior to Suharto's resignation.
--Michael Kinsley
