This is why I don't read Slate anymore. They are no longer distinctive, and therefore no longer interesting. I stopped reading Vox and The Stranger for the same reason. It used to be there were a whole bunch of B-list publications saying interesting things that you wouldn't find in the A-list publications, and they were worth your time. But now? If you have NYT and WaPo subscriptions there is no point reading any of them.
The only interesting content outside of the majors now seems to be one-person blogs and Substacks. So now I am reduced to paying for Matt Yglesias and Andrew Sullivan to get my heterodox viewpoints fix, where I used to get a zillion interesting takes for free back in The Good Old Days When The Net Was Young.
Yeah, I love being 35 and ranting like I want the kids off my lawn. And the kids don't play on lawns anymore! Back in the good old days, cranky old people had kids on their lawns to rant at, but our generation is reduced to ranting in comment threads!
It's sort of strange to me that you don't see the obvious. Which is that the publications used to compete with each other. Now they compete with *you*. And by you I mean, niche writers of all kinds publishing themselves on platforms like this and others. Not just writers, either. Podcasts, and all forms of infotainment media.
The aggregated periodicals are now a block. The same way the major networks are. Nobody cares about the difference between ABC and CBS, because the kinds of people that watch either are the same.
This, by the way, is part of the reason why the "misinformation epidemic" takes on such vitriolic tones in the aggregated media. They're not pointing out a social problem, they're undermining a competitor. The NYT isn't competing with Vox, they're both competing with Joe Rogan.
I miss Matt’s (rightful) disdain for Chop’t’s overreach of the definition of the cobb salad. Sure, it’s more important that we acknowledge the invention of the elevator and reinforced concrete and build more housing but I do miss the cobb salad takes in the Moneybox (Slate) days
This piece was really good. The sort of deadening flatness and homogeneity that has infected all of these publications has overtaken The New Yorker, a real source of depression for me. While liberal, TNY had less of a specific ideological range and thus could also consistently surprise. It just — Alas! — no longer does.
I used to read slate religiously, but my issue was that it reverted to indignation porn. Every article was about some injustice that somebody was angry about and most of the time just felt like unproductive venting. I don't understand who likes to read that kind of stuff. It's exhausting!
“ You’ve already got Charles Blow, Jamelle Bouie, Michelle Goldberg, Ezra Klein, Paul Krugman, and Farhad Manjoo as columnists. Those guys are really good. ”
Seriously? Several of those guys are really not very good.
re tiktok: Science educator / tiktoker Hank Green did a [great thinkpiece video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAZapFzpP64) about the history of monetization of independent video production, and why tiktok's current model is much worse than youtube's.
I miss Slate too and I am not sucking up when I say that I think Slow Boring is the closest to an heir apparent there is. Slow Boring is "contrarian" in an actually thought provoking way. You have Persuasion out there that believe they are contrarian but it's basically just Dem-bashing and whining about college students. I was blown away by "My Own Prison" when I first heard it in middle school but now find Creed pretty cringe.
My Slatepitch is that everybody liked Prometheus when it came out and then for some reason everyone pretended to hate it like 2 years later. It's glorious and ambitious R-rated sci-fi that we rarely get anymore. Take the goddamn win people!
I am assuming "actually the pandemic wasn't so bad for parents" is the take you referenced on Twitter yesterday as being so blisteringly hot you needed to hide it in the middle of an article and hope nobody noticed?
As a married person with no kids, I have to authority to have an opinion on this either way. I can't imagine how people have managed to deal with children, especially two or more, during the past two years. But I also have no idea how I'd have handled being isolated in my apartment for this long, so it's certainly an idea worth raising for all the reasons mentioned in this article.
I miss the old Vox so much. I love explainer journalism. Maybe I’m just getting cranky and old, but I never look at it now. And while I always considered it left, I trusted the information it provided, keeping in mind the slant. Now it just feels like progressive mush.
yeah this rings very true for me. I first subscribed to a Slate RSS feed specifically for Yglesias, but when he left I kept the RSS feed because there were enough interesting ideas and writers. I finally removed it a few months ago because everything was just so SAME--nytimes does a better job with a better website, there is no reason (for me at least) to go to Slate anymore.
This is why I don't read Slate anymore. They are no longer distinctive, and therefore no longer interesting. I stopped reading Vox and The Stranger for the same reason. It used to be there were a whole bunch of B-list publications saying interesting things that you wouldn't find in the A-list publications, and they were worth your time. But now? If you have NYT and WaPo subscriptions there is no point reading any of them.
The only interesting content outside of the majors now seems to be one-person blogs and Substacks. So now I am reduced to paying for Matt Yglesias and Andrew Sullivan to get my heterodox viewpoints fix, where I used to get a zillion interesting takes for free back in The Good Old Days When The Net Was Young.
Yeah, I love being 35 and ranting like I want the kids off my lawn. And the kids don't play on lawns anymore! Back in the good old days, cranky old people had kids on their lawns to rant at, but our generation is reduced to ranting in comment threads!
It's sort of strange to me that you don't see the obvious. Which is that the publications used to compete with each other. Now they compete with *you*. And by you I mean, niche writers of all kinds publishing themselves on platforms like this and others. Not just writers, either. Podcasts, and all forms of infotainment media.
The aggregated periodicals are now a block. The same way the major networks are. Nobody cares about the difference between ABC and CBS, because the kinds of people that watch either are the same.
This, by the way, is part of the reason why the "misinformation epidemic" takes on such vitriolic tones in the aggregated media. They're not pointing out a social problem, they're undermining a competitor. The NYT isn't competing with Vox, they're both competing with Joe Rogan.
So, what you saying is that in order to get the full MattYglesias Thought, you need to read Slow Boring + The NYT Opinion section?
I miss Matt’s (rightful) disdain for Chop’t’s overreach of the definition of the cobb salad. Sure, it’s more important that we acknowledge the invention of the elevator and reinforced concrete and build more housing but I do miss the cobb salad takes in the Moneybox (Slate) days
This piece was really good. The sort of deadening flatness and homogeneity that has infected all of these publications has overtaken The New Yorker, a real source of depression for me. While liberal, TNY had less of a specific ideological range and thus could also consistently surprise. It just — Alas! — no longer does.
I used to read slate religiously, but my issue was that it reverted to indignation porn. Every article was about some injustice that somebody was angry about and most of the time just felt like unproductive venting. I don't understand who likes to read that kind of stuff. It's exhausting!
“ You’ve already got Charles Blow, Jamelle Bouie, Michelle Goldberg, Ezra Klein, Paul Krugman, and Farhad Manjoo as columnists. Those guys are really good. ”
Seriously? Several of those guys are really not very good.
I used to read Slate and quit over the last few years. Something like Unherd is 10x more interesting today.
Slate doesn't seem to do any reporting, which it once seemed to do. Unherd doesn't either, but it seems to be writing things everyone else isn't.
I used to read Slate and quit over the last few years. Something like Unherd is 10x more interesting today.
Slate doesn't seem to do any reporting, which it once seemed to do. Unherd doesn't either, but it seems to be writing things everyone else isn't.
re tiktok: Science educator / tiktoker Hank Green did a [great thinkpiece video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAZapFzpP64) about the history of monetization of independent video production, and why tiktok's current model is much worse than youtube's.
Also, Cleo Abram's tiktoks are great :)
At least you realize you are an old man yelling at a cloud.
That, though not Slatey per se, is self-aware. I approve.
I miss Slate too and I am not sucking up when I say that I think Slow Boring is the closest to an heir apparent there is. Slow Boring is "contrarian" in an actually thought provoking way. You have Persuasion out there that believe they are contrarian but it's basically just Dem-bashing and whining about college students. I was blown away by "My Own Prison" when I first heard it in middle school but now find Creed pretty cringe.
My Slatepitch is that everybody liked Prometheus when it came out and then for some reason everyone pretended to hate it like 2 years later. It's glorious and ambitious R-rated sci-fi that we rarely get anymore. Take the goddamn win people!
I think the Atlantic still does a great job of offering counter opinions and takes, even if they aren't as out there as slatepitches.
I am assuming "actually the pandemic wasn't so bad for parents" is the take you referenced on Twitter yesterday as being so blisteringly hot you needed to hide it in the middle of an article and hope nobody noticed?
As a married person with no kids, I have to authority to have an opinion on this either way. I can't imagine how people have managed to deal with children, especially two or more, during the past two years. But I also have no idea how I'd have handled being isolated in my apartment for this long, so it's certainly an idea worth raising for all the reasons mentioned in this article.
I miss the old Vox so much. I love explainer journalism. Maybe I’m just getting cranky and old, but I never look at it now. And while I always considered it left, I trusted the information it provided, keeping in mind the slant. Now it just feels like progressive mush.
yeah this rings very true for me. I first subscribed to a Slate RSS feed specifically for Yglesias, but when he left I kept the RSS feed because there were enough interesting ideas and writers. I finally removed it a few months ago because everything was just so SAME--nytimes does a better job with a better website, there is no reason (for me at least) to go to Slate anymore.