Happy Monday and welcome to the new and improved Slatest, the latest incarnation of Slate’s news blog. Here’s how our innovations editor, Katherine Goldstein, summed up the changes in our official announcement this morning:
“Starting today, the Slatest has a new tagline: ‘Your News Companion.’ Rather than offering comprehensive aggregation, the new Slatest will highlight the excellent writing and keen editorial voice of Josh Voorhees, who’ll be bringing you definitive insight into the day’s events.”
You can read the full announcement here, complete with a few examples of the type of dynamic posts you’ll see on the blog in the coming days (but, alas, no additional praise of your host’s charming personality or dashing good looks). But I figured I’d offer you all my own quick introduction to the new blog because, well, that’s my name up top with our logo.
While the old Slatest cast the net far and wide to aggregate the day’s most important and most interesting stories, this new blog version will be more selective and more varied. We’ll still jump on major breaking news (often with all-in live blogging), but we’ll also take a half-step back when we can to debunk some nugget of faux-news that is setting Twitter atwitter, or to answer a factual question that may arise from the current news cycle.
We’ll also be flagging those items from around the Web that you shouldn’t miss, whether it’s the latest super PAC ad aimed at shaking up the campaign or a must-read article that offers a unique, or simply complete, take on one of the day’s top stories. In short—and as our new tagline suggests—we’re hoping to serve as your companion through the day’s news cycle(s), and we think this new format will allow us to better accomplish that.
I’ll stop telling and start showing in a moment, but there’s one more thing you need to know: Every afternoon, we’ll be sending out a long(ish)form, text-heavy newsletter giving you a 30,000-foot view of the day’s news, complete with links to great content from Slate and the rest of the online journalism world.
Think of the PM newsletter as what would happen if Politico’s Playbook knocked up Slate’s old Today’s Papers, and the resulting love child—no doubt rebellious and confused—was then raised by the steady hand of a grandfather-like evening network newscast. (This is a good time to note that because we’ll be moving fast, we clearly aren’t promising you gold in the Humorous Metaphor Department.) You can sign up for the newsletter here.
This is the Internet after all, so the entire team also hopes to interact with our readers. You can Like The Slatest on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. You can make me feel better about my relatively anemic social media presence by following me at @JoshVoorhees, or tell me just how much you miss Today’s Papers by emailing me at josh.voorhees@slate.com. (Note: I’m happy to provide you with that shoulder to cry on, but it won’t bring her back from the dead; it’s time to move on.) There’s also, of course, the comment section down below each and every post, which we’ll likewise be keeping tabs on.
All right, away we go…
