Jacob Weisberg: Slate is Fundamentally Different from Most Print Media
The editor of the leading online magazine says that his writers will ask readers for help with reporting
By Tao Lin
Photo/Everett Bogue
The first issue of Slate, an online magazine, had page numbers. You read it page by page, clicking to go on to the next page, as if it were a print magazine in your hands.
That was 1996. Today Slate is the most widely read online magazine—looks nothing like a print magazine—and is, online or not, the only daily magazine in existence, according to its editor, Jacob Weisberg.
“We have a cover story everyday,” says Weisberg. “The content stays live for a week before we push it into the archives. But every day we come up with a lead story, some features, a graphic front page.”
The acclaimed online magazine of politics and culture, known for its thoughtful and analytical editorial content, was purchased in December by the Washington Post Co. from longtime owner Microsoft
Slate has no commercial competitors, Weisberg claims. It has only “intellectual competitors,” which are all print publications, such as The New Yorker and The Atlantic.
But Slate is fundamentally different from most print media. For starters, its editors don’t believe in using quotations in its articles. “Our view is that quotations are there often to thank the sources, or for the writer to kind of congratulate himself on having talked to the person,” says Weisberg. “We try to keep things in Slate very tight and concise.”
“We’re waiting for the iPod of reading. Someone’s going to invent it. And when that happens that’s going to be a huge advantage to us.”
Slate aims to keep all of its articles under 1,000 words. One lesson its editors learned early on is that most people don’t like reading long articles online. If a story requires more than 1,000 words, it is usually broken into installments.
Oftentimes, a writer at Slate working on a long, in-depth article will ask readers for information and help. “It’s sort of open source reporting,” says Weisberg. “We’re very upfront about what we don’t know. This can only be done in an online magazine.”
Another aspect unique to Slate is that its editors don’t believe in fact-checking. “We think it makes authors lazy and careless,” says Weisberg. “We like writers to be responsible for their facts. And we’ve also discovered that on the Internet, and particularly since the advent of blogging, mistakes get found out very quickly. So there’s a huge disincentive to making mistakes.”
Weisberg describes himself as very pro-blog, pointing out that Slate publishes a number of popular blogs. They include the political Kausfiles, by Mickey Kaus, and Today’s Blogs, which highlights the major topics in the blogosphere.
Weisberg is optimistic about future of online magazines. He predicts a dedicated device will be created within the next several years that will be used for reading electronic-based editorial content. “We’re waiting for the iPod of reading,” he says. “Someone’s going to invent it. And when that happens that’s going to be a huge advantage to us.”
Weisberg wrote political articles for The New Republic, Newsweek and New York Magazine before joining Slate in 1996.
No one can safely predict what Internet journalism will look like 10 years from now, he adds. “We’ve already been through periods of enthusiasm about Internet publications, great skepticism and doubt about them, and now I’d say we’re at a stage where a more measured kind of enthusiasm is building again.”