The Root doesn't reach far from the tree

IT'S only fitting that the Root, the new online black news, opinion and ancestry magazine launched by the Washington Post Co. almost two weeks ago, is still figuring out its identity. The small publication, created in 2 1/2 months, operates out of a borrowed conference room at the Washington offices of sister e-mag Slate.com. It has only four employees, including its editor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., whose day job is being a famous professor at Harvard, which is not in Washington.

By David Sarno

February 10, 2008