KINSLEY'S MOMENT OF TRUTH

By JOSHUA QUITTNER

Sometimes I think of myself as a kind of lesser Michael Kinsley. For years he was the fiery voice of TV liberalism on Crossfire; during the same period I battled bravely against my quick-witted and Republican mother-in-law. While Kinsley and I both contribute to this magazine, he tends to get a full page or more, while I get a modest two columns. And when he left old media to go to Microsoft, where he founded Slate, an online magazine www.slate.com that transmitted its first bits seven months ago, pundits everywhere interpreted the event as a sign that serious journalism was finally coming to the Web. When I launched the Netly News six months before Slate, one of the New York City papers mentioned my modest efforts too. In a story about Kinsley.

You might think this makes me bitter, playing digital Salieri to Kinsley's Mozart. But I am a realist. I need Kinsley the same way a coal miner needs his canary. Which is to say, if I see him topple from his perch as an online publisher, I'm dashing for the exit. That's part of the reason I made a point of meeting him for dinner the last time I visited Seattle. I was worried.

My concern had nothing to do with the way Kinsley appeared to be flirting with doom by regularly needling his boss in his "readme" column. ("Have it killed," Bill Gates orders Kinsley in a recent column. "You mean, 'Have him killed,'" Kinsley replies, referring to the author of a Slate article. "No, you fools," Gates shrieks. "Kill the piece! Kill the piece!") I suspect such stuff is seen at Microsoft headquarters as a necessary evil, a way for Kinsley to demonstrate Slate's independence.

No, the true source of my angst was the apostasy that Kinsley has long threatened and was at last poised to commit. Come February, Slate would cease being like nearly everything else on the Net: free. Slate devotees who wanted to keep reading its weekly mix of news and political commentary would be charged $19.95 a year.

"You're really going to make people pay?" I blurted, some might say hysterically, as Kinsley sat down at a waterfront restaurant.

"Some people think it's immoral," he acknowledged. "Clearly, it's going to be a challenge." But yes, he was hoping to persuade at least 100,000 readers to pay up before the end of the year. That would have been something of a miracle, given that by Kinsley's estimate, only 50,000 to 90,000 people read his clever 'zine gratis. What if his readers fled? How long would Microsoft let Slate live? "I haven't been told specifically," Kinsley said, calm as custard, "but everything I've heard says Microsoft won't pull the plug precipitately."

I could hardly touch my morel-sauced salmon, so fixated was I on the dilemma he had placed us in. As the cut-rate Kinsley, I would have to start charging Netly News hounds--what? Nine dollars and ninety-five cents? No way. I happen to know Netly News readers believe in the free lunch. Some have even asked me for small loans.

Perhaps my whining and clutching at Kinsley's ankles that night paid off. Late last week Kinsley informed his readers he had decided to keep Slate free--for the "indefinite" future. "There are too many people who are too damned cheap...er...too engaged by the novelty of the medium to feel the need to pay extra," Kinsley wrote. "Pornographic and financial sites are a possible exception." Financial is out of the question. But I'll take off my shirt if he will.

See the Netly News' new look at netlynews.com on the World Wide Web