Slate (magazine)
U.S.-based online magazine
Slate is an American online magazine that covers current affairs, politics, and culture in the United States. It was created in 1996 by Michael Kinsley with Microsoft's backing. In 2004, it was purchased by The Washington Post Company (later renamed the Graham Holdings Company), and since 2008 has been managed by The Slate Group, an online publishing entity created by Graham Holdings. Slate is based in New York City, with an additional office in Washington, D.C.
As of 2025, the magazine is both ad-supported and has a membership model with a metered paywall. It is known, and sometimes criticized, for adopting contrarian views, which gave rise to the term "Slate Pitches". It has a generally liberal editorial stance.
History
Origin
Slate was founded on June 24, 1996 by Michael Kinsley under the ownership of Microsoft. Kinsley wrote that one of the site's goals was proving that "the economies of cyberspace make it easier for our kind of journalism to pay for itself". The outlet was considered an early pioneer of digital journalism and popularized features such as hyperlinks and communications between writers and readers. The website received much user traffic from the MSN network through its relationship with Microsoft.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Slate (magazine)” is u.S.-based online magazine. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Slate, magazine and -based, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “u.S.-based online magazine” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q60497. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996, 2004, 2008 and 2025.
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This entry incorporates text from “Slate (magazine)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.