An Empty Slate

I used to really enjoy reading Slate.com, but over the last few months it seems to have lost some of its luster. If pressed, I don't think that a few days ago I could have pinpointed what it was that has caused my disappointment. All I had was just a vague feeling of not-so-freshness. When I came across this post from Matthew Yglesias though, it brought a focus to my previously hazy notion.

The quality of the writing from a wide variety of perspectives on an even wider range of topics, was what made Slate a great site. Politics, policy, television, books, music, architecture, shopping, business, the environment, Slate covered it all and in ways that were never dull and often often unexpected. It is this range that, of late, has been missing and I think I know why. Slate has developed too many new spin-off websites devoted to narrow interests and in the process starved the original Slate of the variety and quality that made it special.

The recent past has given us the new sites The Big Money, The Root, Foreign Policy, and now DoubleX. All brought to you by something called Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive, LLC. Who knew that limited liability may also limit your ability to be entertaining and informative.

It's as if the leadership at Slate looked at the mortgage backed securities debacle and decided that was a great business model for new media. They had a depth and breadth of content bundled together at one terrific site, Slate. A site where not every piece was a home run, or appealed to every reader, but that was its strength; it would bend, but not break. Someone visits the site because they like the advice column, but they stay and read Fred Kaplan on Pakistan. Instead of imitating that bundled structure, Slate has chosen to slice it up, just like those mortgage backed securities. So rather than a Slate characterized by variety, we now have tranches of content scattered across other sites.

As I've argued before, the slicers have a habit of keeping the weakest tranche for themselves. Now I am not saying the content at any of these spin-offs surpasses the original Slate, yet. But can a Slate site featuring Jack Shafer and Seth Stevenson on the media be far off? I suppose we'll always have Hitchens, but then what? A site dominated by reviews of gangsta rap or Hollywood's latest attempt to gin up some cash by appealing to our most debased tastes is not a site I'm interested in, no matter how well written.

Channeling your content into narrow fields not only leaves the original site weaker, but creates a new site that is weak on two counts. First, the new site is devoted to a single topic. What happened to reading across the curriculum? Second, the new site is largely dominated by a single way of thinking about that single topic. The DoubleX site is dedicated to women's issues, and run by women that have many ties to the original Slate. This results in a site with an editorial worldview that is a mix of post-feminist girl power and limousine liberal. While this particular brand of fusion punditry may have a broad appeal to mostly urban, college educated women, did we really need another entire website dedicated to promoting it? I don't think so.

By splintering their content, Slate is running the risk of splintering their audience as well. At a time when so much of the old media seem on the verge of non-existence, it's a little bit sad to see one of the veterans of the new media diminish, no matter how slightly. Emptying Slate of what made it great would be a mistake.

Bonus Coverage

Andrew Ross Sorkin of the NY Times recently made an attempt to follow The Other McCain's Rule 4, but only on the flimsiest of pretexts, so I really don't think that it counts.

Mr. Sorkin argues that we should, in his words, swallow hard and pay the AIG bonuses that have caused so much outrage over the last two days in order to maintain the "sanctity of contracts."

Meanwhile, preeminent econoblogger Tyler Cowen over at Marginal Revolution takes time to blog about the fact that he is not blogging about the AIG bonuses.

Memo to these agents provocateurs of media old and new: Bucking conventional wisdom in such conventional ways does not make you Christopher Hitchens. It won't even get you points toward your contrarian merit badge.

Did we really need Sorkin to extoll the virtues of maintaining contracts when we already have Ed Liddy and Larry Summers doing the same.

As for Cowen, if blogging about blogging is 'meta', what is blogging about not blogging?

Try again guys. Next time just don't try so hard.

A Tale of Two Critiques

Two recent columns critiquing President Obama strike remarkably similar themes despite the fact that one addresses foreign policy and the other domestic policy.

The first comes via a post over at Lakeshore Laments which comments on a column by Robert Kagan that appeared in the Washington Post. Kagan makes the point that much of the Obama foreign policy so far is really just a continuation of policies that began under Bush, but they are being touted as part of the change that Obama promised to bring to government.

Kagan goes on to argue that the administration is able to make the case that their actions thus far represent change only because the press corps accepts these claims uncritically. As Kevin over at Lakeshore points out however, Kagan's critique is somewhat diminished by his reputation as an advocate of the war in Iraq. No such problem exists as far as I know for the author of the second critique, economics writer Robert Samuelson.

Samuelson's column that appeared at Real Clear Politics on Monday is entitled "Obama is a Great Pretender," and focuses on Obama's domestic policy initiatives, particularly his budget and the stimulus. I wouldn't say that Samuelson is known as a partisan, but as the title suggests, his criticism is absolutely withering. It begins:

To those who believe that Barack Obama is a different kind of politician -- more honest, more courageous -- please don't examine his administration's budget. If you do, you may sadly conclude that he resembles presidents stretching back to John Kennedy in one crucial respect. He won't tax voters for all the government services they want. That's the main reason we've run budget deficits in 43 of the past 48 years.

Obama is a great pretender. He repeatedly says he's doing things that he isn't, trusting his powerful rhetoric to obscure the difference. He has made "responsibility" a personal theme; the budget's cover line is "A New Era of Responsibility." He says the budget begins "making the tough choices necessary to restore fiscal discipline." It doesn't.

Samuelson goes on from there to describe how a truly responsible budget might treat issues such as taxation, entitlements, defense spending and farm subsidies. He also takes Obama to task for the lack of bipartisan support his proposals have found thus far. Stating that Obama has pursued positions that invite rather than avoid opposition.

As he closes, Samuelson strikes some of the same themes that Kagan did - the lack of real change and a complicit media:

Obama thinks he can ignore these blatant inconsistencies. Like many smart people, he believes he can talk his way around problems. Maybe. He's helped by much of the media, who seem so enthralled with him that they don't see glaring contradictions. During the campaign, Obama said he would change Washington's petty partisanship; he also advocated a highly partisan agenda. Both claims could not be true. The media barely noticed; the same obliviousness persists. But Obama still runs a risk: that his overworked rhetoric loses its power and boomerangs on him.

I'll save the fashion report on the emperor here, but suffice it to say that both commentators note a striking disconnect rhetoric and reality. A condition that is at the very least ignored, and at the worst actually aided, by the nation's media.

Maybe it is too much to ask of one man to change an entire nation's politics, but is it too much to ask him to stop telling us that he is doing just that? Probably. After all, the President is a politician. But it is definitely not too much to ask our nation's reporters and editors to approach a president, even one they have great personal affection for, with a more skeptical eye.