Banking on Slate
Michael E. Kinsley was one of the first big-name journalists to immerse himself in the online world. In 1996, he founded the online news and feature magazine Slate (www.slate.com), financed by Microsoft Corp.’s deep pockets.
Several Web magazines have folded in the last couple of years, but Kinsley said that Slate, which last month had 2.8 million visitors, according to Jupiter Media Metrix, is close to breaking even without undergoing major cutbacks.
Slate was originally envisioned as a paid site, and in 1998 began charging $19.95 a year for full access. Only a year later it went back to being free, with its sole income from advertising.
This month, a few weeks after he disclosed in a Time magazine essay that he had Parkinson’s disease, Kinsley told the Slate staff via e-mail that he was stepping down as editor. “I feel I need a change, and I think Slate could use a change as well,” he wrote.
He still will write his weekly column for the site and continue as a contributing writer at Time magazine.
Before starting the online venture, Kinsley was best known as co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire” on which he regularly tangled, ideologically, with Pat Buchanan. In print magazines, he was twice editor of the New Republic and for 11 years wrote its flagship “TRB from Washington” column.
Question: You’ve said that one of your main goals with Slate was to become profitable. Why, with Microsoft’s backing, was that so important?
Answer: Because in the long run I think it’s the best guarantee of editorial independence. We want to show that the Internet serves freedom of speech in an important way by making it easier for a publication to become self-sustaining.
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Q: But no publications on the scale of Slate have ever broken even and many have died.
A: No one has found quite the right business model or gotten one to work except for those marketing sex or greed, and even greed has not really done it. What form it will take in terms of advertising and subscription fees is not quite obvious yet, but something is going to work.
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Q: You tried running Slate as a paid site.
A: Someone had to try it and we jumped first. We got about 30,000 subscribers, which was not bad, but at the same time we had 400,000 visiting the free part of our site. It just seemed that selling advertising with 400,000 visitors--now almost 3 million--was a better business model than trying to squeeze 19 bucks out of 100,000 subscribers.
Also, when we went to a paid model, it was still a time when there was a big thing about information wanting to be free. That has died down. Just because we were not a success doesn’t mean someone won’t figure out how to do it.
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Q: The Wall Street Journal seems to have success with a paid site.
A: They have greed on their side. Actually, they do a great job.
It’s a mystery to me that the micro-payments thing [whereby a user pays per pages read] has not happened. There are all sorts of times I would pay a buck for something on the Web, but I think the problem is that you have to fill out long forms to do that. I’m willing to pay the buck, but I don’t feel like going through all that, so I move on.
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Q: Did your ideas about online content change since you started Slate?
A: Oh yes. I came out here thinking that we would produce a kind of magazine that people would download once a week, print out and read like the New Yorker or Newsweek.
By the time we actually went online we were posting a great hunk of stuff on Friday morning, then adding other stuff three or four days a week. We thought that was quite cool.
But the whole idea of a site is that it can be constantly renewed and updated. Now we refresh the content probably 12 times a day.
We are still on a weekly cycle on some things, like my column. I do think there is something natural about it. And we do have some pretty cool options for printing material out, but we don’t market it very well.
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Q: Do you still believe Slate will become profitable?
A: The gap has been closing every year. I know everyone says this, but I think Slate will break even next year, fiscal 2003.
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Q: That’s still important even though you’re not editor?
A: My reputation is still on the line. This thing is not a success if it does not last beyond me.
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AT A GLANCE
Name: Michael E. Kinsley
Born: March 9, 1951, in Detroit
Personal: Lives in Seattle
2001 salary: Not disclosed
Education: Bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University, 1972; law degree from Harvard Law School, 1977
Career: Before founding Slate in 1996, Kinsley had been editor of the New Republic and Harper’s. He was managing editor of the Washington Monthly. On television, he was co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire.”
