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December 21, 2004
Slate sold to the Washington Post
Slate, the MSN version of The New Yorker, is being sold to the Washington Post. MSN has changed and morphed in many ways since its initial launch with Windows 95, reflecting the twists and turns in the prevailing vision of how the Internet would be monetized, but to its credit Microsoft has kept Slate in its same basic form for most of those years.Actually when Jacob Weisberg writes "When we published articles that the 'shirts' in Redmond can't have liked very much, they did not complain or otherwise attempt to restrain us" my reaction is "Of course they didn't! Why would Microsoft do that?" I know Weisberg is being grateful, but the fact that he mentioned it reflects the widespread belief that Microsoft, given the choice between evil and non-evil, will reflexively choose evil.
I don't recall specific cases where Slate tweaked BillG's schnozz, but it is interesting to contract the reaction to such writing (which must have been muted or nonexistent, since I don't recall any) with the current flap about Scoble's advice to the Windows Media team. I'm sure what Slate wrote was MORE negative than Scoble's constructive criticism, yet because they were "journalists", it was viewed as a Good Thing. When a blogger does it, people complain, for a variety of reasons. What does this say about the gap between "real" journalism and blogging? BTFOOM...I report, you decide.
Posted by AdamBa at December 21, 2004 08:52 AM
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