When Michael Kinsley stumbled through an NPR interview about his new job as editor of a then-unfocused and unnamed Web publication for The Microsoft Network, we were willing to cut him a break. It was apparent to anyone listening to All Things Considered that the former New Republic honcho and CrossÞre host had spent little or no time thinking about how to tell stories on the Web.
Six months later, his site has a focus and a name but Kinsley's understanding of the Web appears to have regressed. Debuting this summer, it is, unsurprisingly, about politics and culture. Its chosen name is Slate "as in blank," Kinsley is telling interviewers. With his insistence on calling it a magazine, and his plans to produce paper copies of what he says will be "plain-old articles," Kinsley's Slate is poised to deliver an experience akin to the sound of Þngernails being dragged down a chalkboard.
ELECTRIC WORD
The Web Nets a Commercial Success
Microsoft's Blank Slate
