Slate abandons subscription fees

In an effort to increase its audience and make itself more attractive to advertisers, the Microsoft-owned online magazine Slate has abandoned its subscription-fee-based, old-media-style business model in favor of granting all surfers free access to its Web site.

"We're backing down," admitted Slate's Michael Kinsley in an announcement emailed to the site's current subscribers February 12. "It now looks as if it's going to be easier to sell ads but harder to sell subscriptions than we thought a year ago. ... Ad revenue from the increased traffic will more than compensate for the lost subscriptions."

Newly appointed Publisher Scott Moore, who replaced Rogers Weed last week, said that certain premium services such as email and archive access would continue to be offered to subscribers at the same $19.95/year rate. Access to all current editorial content at the Slate Web site, slate.com, will become free.

With this move, Slate acknowledges and joins the burgeoning, fast-developing ads-for-access model that has become a vital paradigm in ecommerce. In it, information and other products (email accounts, Internet access, computer hardware sold at or below cost or simply given away) are studded with advertisements and distributed freely to end users. The Web sites concerned make their profits selling audiences to advertisers, rather than selling content, widgets, etc, to audiences.