Politics and Culture
Slate Lite
A little-known clause in the
First Amendment gives weekly magazines the right to a week off every now and
then, especially during the summer. When
Slate
began publishing
two years ago, we thought we were a weekly magazine, more or less. But
we have evolved into something much more ... more ... well, "dynamic" is the
approved term of Web self-hype. "Relentless" is how our staff (and perhaps even
a few readers) might prefer to describe it. We now post new material at all
hours, seven days a week. Last summer, when Princess Di's fatal car crash
occurred the day after we shut down for a week, we realized that a vital and
underrated press freedom--the freedom not to publish--does not apply to
Webzines or, at least, not to this one. (Many thanks to the readers who wrote
in to thank us for not succumbing to Di'n'Dodi hysteria. An undeserved
compliment is cherished all the more.)
What is left of our weeks
off is two weeks during the summer and one at Christmas, when we publish less
material than usual. The first of those summer weeks is now upon us. We have
posted a full week's worth of material today (post date July 23) and will
resume our full publishing schedule a week from Monday (Aug. 3). In the
interim, though, we will continue to post and update "Briefing" features such
as "The Week/The Spin"; "Today's Papers" will continue (now seven days a week);
the daily "News Quiz" will appear; and features such as "Chatterbox," "The
Breakfast Table," and "Dialogues" will be updated often but irregularly, as
always. That should be enough to satisfy most people, we hope. And if you need
more, there's two years' worth of our archive, "The Compost," to poke around
in.
Thanks
for cutting us a little slack.
Slate Progress Report
When
Slate
became a paid-subscription site in March, we steeled ourselves for an
inevitable drop in our audience. We're delighted to report that it hasn't
happened. We had more visitors in June than in any month since we began
publishing two years ago. According to Media Metrix, the leading Internet
audience measurement service,
Slate
had a "reach" of 0.6 in June.
Reach is defined as the percentage of the total World Wide Web audience in
America that visited your site at least once during the month. Out of a Web
audience Media Metrix estimates as 40.4 million, a reach of 0.6 works out to
240,000 individual visitors. That doesn't include visitors outside the United
States--at least 10 percent of our audience, as best we can estimate. It also
doesn't include subscribers who read
Slate
exclusively through
e-mail delivery
or subscribers to Slate on Paper.
Paid subscribers now number
23,000--up 35 percent from the 17,000 subscribers we had the day we went paid.
That's an encouraging rate of growth. But how can we have 10 times as many
visitors as we have subscribers? Answer: People are coming to our "front
porch"--the small sample of
Slate
's contents that is made
available to nonsubscribers--and they are taking advantage of our free month's trial
offer. Naturally, we hope these nibbles of
Slate
's splendors
will persuade visitors to purchase the full meal. And that appears to be
happening.
Among
magazines on the Web,
Slate
's reach of 0.6 is lower than that of
Pathfinder (the site shared by all Time Inc. magazines) and Hotwired, and
higher than that of U.S. News , Salon , and the Economist .
All these other sites except the Economist are free. The New
Yorker has no Web site to speak of.
Politics
and Culture
Jacob Weisberg,
Slate
's chief political correspondent, looked around him a few
months ago and saw nothing but squalor. This is not a reference to
Slate
's New York bureau, where Jacob hangs his laptop. Those
offices actually are quite snazzy, in an ever-so-faintly seedy downtown sort of
way, inciting no small amount of envy in those of us who labor in the bland
corporate vineyards of Redmond, Wash. No, what struck Jacob as oppressively
squalid was the subject matter he was forced to contemplate week after week:
fleeting, age-inappropriate sexual liaisons in the Oval Office; the seep of
money into every cranny of the political system; Trent Lott; Newt Gingrich. It
was more than a sensitive soul could bear.
"Where is
beauty?" Jacob wailed. "Where is art? Man does not live by Social Security
privatization alone." And he pleaded to the editor, "Take me away from here, to
a realm of high thoughts and charmed vistas, where I may contemplate matters
more lovely than special prosecutors and nuclear proliferation. Where aesthetic
considerations are paramount and base motives are unknown."
And the editor heard Jacob's plea. And he said, "Arise,
Jacob, and put aside politics for a few months. Go forth and cover culture and
the arts. There, among the intellectuals and book people and artsy-fartsies
generally, you will find nothing but wholesomeness. Beauty is in their hearts
and beauty is on their minds. Dwell among them and let their purity wash away
the filth of politics with which you are encrusted after lo! these many columns
and articles on the subject."
But Jacob was pierced by
shafts of doubt. "Are you sure," he asked the editor, "that the world of
culture is actually so wonderful and that the people who dwell therein are
actually so pure? If so, what will I write about? Goodness and purity maketh
not much of a column. What will I impugn, if not motives?"
"Fear not, Jacob," the editor
replied. "You will think of something. And, come to think of it, the world of
culture may not be as pure as all that after all. There is squalor aplenty. But
at least it will be a different kind of squalor." And the editor decreed that
Jacob's first culture column should be called "The Browser." And he decreed
that Jacob's first
Browser column should post Thursday, July 23.
And it was
good. (Or it had better be.)
Musical
Chairs
Meanwhile, though, who would cover politics while Jacob dwelt in the land of
the artsy-fartsies? Using several top executive search firms, as well as
experimental talent sorting software from Nathan Myhrvold's research labs here
at Microsoft, we scientifically ranked everyone in the entire world on the
basis of their qualifications to cover American politics for an online
magazine. By a miraculous and money-saving coincidence, No. 1 turned out to be
Slate
Senior Writer David Plotz, whose first "Strange
Bedfellow" column was posted last week. (And here's the latest.)
Complainer
Slate
's Explainer is complaining about the quality of the questions he is
receiving. Explainer stands ready to explain items in the day's news that are
confusing or vague or seemingly contradictory or otherwise inadequately
explained by the conventional media. But many of the questions he receives, he
says, are "tendentious." They don't really seek information or understanding.
Questions such as "Why is Rep. John Kasich such a jerk?" are essentially
unanswerable. They begin from a debatable premise and go on to raise profound
metaphysical questions that are beyond the scope of this
Slate
feature. Questions such as "How big a jerk is Rep. John Kasich?" are no better.
The answer is inherently subjective. (Many people believe, in all sincerity,
that he is a very small jerk. Nor does the question allow for the possibility,
however slight, that he is not a jerk at all.) "Why doesn't my computer work?"
is another category of questions Explainer is not prepared to answer. Questions
about life and love should go to "Dear Prudence." But if there's something that truly puzzles you
in the paper this morning, Explainer is eager to straighten you out.
--Michael Kinsley
