There goes Slate

So the big news is one of my fave online mags, Slate, is leaving the Microsoft fold and being sold to The Washington Post Group. The New York Times notes that Steve Ballmer, "Microsoft's chief executive since 2000, has spearheaded a move to spin off businesses that are not part of the company's core software development operations." Current editor Jacob Weisberg will stay in charge.

I do like Slate. It's been around since Michael Kinsley came to the MS main campus in Redmond, Wash. in 1996 (the same year I worked there) to start up an online magazine with a political focus. (I still remember the naff Newsweek cover, titled "Everyone's Moving to Seattle," with Kinsley in a Sou'Wester, holding a salmon and grinning inanely: just awful.) This was back when Microsoft was in its short-lived "content is king" phase. Kinsley got Parkinson's disease and gave up the editorship, but he keeps going, and so has Slate. (Here's a good Seattle Weekly article about the history of the mag). Well, it's eight years later, content is definitely no longer king at Redmond, and loads of online magazines have come and gone, yet incredibly Slate has survived. But Ballmer and Bill Gates have finally gotten sick of the thing. I hope things don't change too much in Slate-land.

Oh, btw, I need to exhale and exclaim: "Slate. Boy, eight years! Time flies!" Yup.