After The Washington Post Company announced that it had agreed to sell its flagship publication to Jeff Bezos, some wondered why the founder of Amazon didn't also made a play to buy the company's digital-first publication, Slate. As it turns out, the web magazine was never under consideration.
"There wasn't [any conversation]," Slate chairman and editor in chief Jacob Weisberg told Mashable, in response to a question about whether talks took place with his team about buying the publication. "I think basically we are not the problem. Slate is working as a business."
See also: Jeff Bezos: It Will Take Years to Fix 'The Washington Post'
Weisberg suggests that The Post's struggles had turned into a distraction for the overall company's efforts to embrace digital technology.
"The Post itself, because it's been such a big problem they couldn't solve, has been both a distraction and I think it has preempted them from doing things they'd do otherwise," he said. "I actually think there will be a little more corporate attention in a good way on Slate. They realize we are a fast-growing digital business."
In addition to Slate, The Washington Post Company will hold onto publications Foreign Policy and TheRoot.com, as well as Kaplan, WaPo Labs and other assets. The company plans to change its name to reflect the sale of its flagship property, though Weisberg says we shouldn't expect it to be called Slate Company.
Perhaps the most immediate impact of the acquisition is that Slate now needs to separate itself from some of The Post's legal, finance and ad operations teams. "We are in the midst of disentangling that all right now, which means probably hiring some people to do those functions," Weisberg said. He expects Slate to "absorb" about half a dozen employees from The Post.
The Washington Post acquisition is ironic for the Slate team on multiple levels. Slate started out in Seattle, housed at Microsoft, only to be acquired by The Washington Post Company in 2004; nearly a decade later, a billionaire mogul from Seattle came and upended Slate's new company. Weisberg also points out that the Washington Post Company's CEO, Donald Graham, likely bought Slate to help save The Post, only to end up keeping the former and selling the latter.
"I think [Graham] thought Slate wasn't necessarily going to be much of a business, but it would be helpful to The Washington Post in terms of getting technology-forward editorial people through the door and it would rub off," he said. "The opposite has happened: I think we've turned into quite a solid business and I'm not sure we were much help for The Post, not because we didn't want to be, but because we were sort of separate."
While Slate's leadership doesn't expect to be negatively impacted by the acquisition, some on the team do admit to being taken aback by The Post's acquisition.
"When The Washington Post bought us, we were part of a division of The Post called Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive," David Plotz, editor of Slate, told Mashable in an interview. "And it's really freaky: Newsweek vanished, and now the Post..."
He stopped short of asking the obvious: Will Slate be next?
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