Today my first article for Slate, What’s the Best Jury Size?, was posted. I’m pretty excited because this is a new venue for me, and one that has a very large audience. While Slate started out as a website that was mostly about politics and culture, it is now in the process of beefing up its science coverage, which I think is a move heartily to be encouraged.
When I tell people I’m writing an article for Slate, I’m a little bit uncertain how to explain it to them. Should I say “Slate, an online magazine”? “Slate, a website”? Should I just say “Slate” and assume they have heard about it? According to Wikipedia, it’s “a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock.” Oops, wrong slate. It’s “a United-States-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley.”
Anyway, according to me, it’s an online magazine/website/portal/thingy that started way back during the first dot-com bubble and then forgot to die when everything else did. It’s now owned by the Washington Post and doing great. Now that they’re publishing my articles, they have to be doing great, right? 😎
