Kinsley Will Resign as Editor Of Microsoft's Slate Magazine
By NICK WINGFIELD Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
After more than six years at the helm of Slate magazine, Michael Kinsley is stepping down as editor of the Microsoft Corp. politics and culture Web site.
In an e-mail to the online magazine's staff Sunday evening, Mr. Kinsley said he would leave the top editorial job as of Monday, adding that he will continue to write his weekly column, entitled "Readme," and contribute to other Slate departments. Mr. Kinsley said he has stayed at Slate longer than he'd stayed at any previous job in his career, which has included stints as editor of the New Republic and as a liberal counterpoint to conservative Pat Buchanan on CNN's "Crossfire."
"I feel I need a change, and I think Slate could use a change as well," Mr. Kinsley wrote.
Mr. Kinsley, who disclosed last year that he has Parkinson's disease, said in his e-mail that his decision wasn't "directly" related to his illness. However, he added that the new arrangement would "make it easier to be good about things like exercise and sleep that are especially important." He said that he intends to take more time off in the future to travel "in case that gets hard in future years." In a first-person account in Time magazine in December, Mr. Kinsley said that he was diagnosed with Parkinson's eight years ago, but chose to keep his illness a secret.
Slate's deputy editor Jack Shafer and political editor Jacob Weisberg will be acting editor during the next several months as Slate looks for a new editor. Both men are candidates for the permanent job, but Mr. Kinsley wrote that Slate would accept nominations from the staff for other candidates.
Slate was founded in 1996, when when many new Internet sites were frantically hiring staff to produce original news and commentary. Slate was one of several efforts Microsoft made to invest in Internet media in what was thought to be a promising new market. With the dot-com implosion though, many of those sites, including many of Microsoft's media sites, have vanished. Microsoft, though, has continued to support Slate and its high-profile team of editors.
Slate tried to make readers pay for its news and political commentary back in 1997, but dropped those plans. Mr. Kinsley told Slate readers at the time that the publication had "chickened out" on plans to charge for access. Slate resurrected the subscription model in 1998 -- but scrapped it again in February 1999 amid a sharp downturn in the site's traffic.