Slate V
posted in Business, Technology |I’ve been a reader of Slate since way back a long time ago when they first figured out that they couldn’t charge subscriptions to the site. I’ve always found it to be a nice mix of news, eclectic interesting articles and opinion.
Lately they seem to be trying to chase the latest hot Internet trends by offering many of their articles as video under the brand “Slate V”. To me this effort falls totally flat. The type of mental place I’m in when I check in on Slate is not somewhere where I want to be having to listen to the audio and move along at the pace that they set. Now, I understand catering to different audiences, so if this is just a supplement to the existing content, fine. I also understand that sometimes pictures, video, or audio really are important to communicating the story. They have long had slide-shows (and video slide shows) for pieces where that fits. But it feels like many of the Slate V pieces are not available as normal text and would have been much better suited to sticking with that medium.