Web Magazine Slate Goes Free, Reversing Course
Staff -- Library Journal, 2/12/1999
After a year of charging subscribers $19.95, Slate, which has a website at www.slate.com, magazine, owned by Microsoft and edited by Michael Kinsley, reversed course and offered its content for free, beginning February 12. Why? As a letter from Slate's publisher to subscribers explained, the advertising market on the Web exploded, while paid subscriptions for content (other than smut and investments) did not grow, restricting Slate's advertising potential. Slate, considered one of the most substantial publishing efforts on the web, can now be hyperlinked from other sites on the web. Slate will still offer daily E-mail deliveries, its weekly print-out edition, and its archives only to subscribers.
