Alright, we’ve been getting questions for a while about why there’s a link down there on the left to Slate.com. Now at last we can tell you.
Here’s the deal: as you know, these have been difficult times for online content providers. NBC just pulled the plug on NBC Internet — their lame online division with the commercials featuring that svelte, fetching brunnette. And little more than a week ago Inside.com, one of the most buzzworthy web ventures out there, pulled the plug on itself and ‘merged’ with Brill’s Content.
Well, even ventures with deep-pockets behind them can’t ignore the gusting winds roiling the online sea. So tomorrow we’re going to be announcing the merger of Slate.com and Talking Points Memo.
Now for the moment, we’d really rather not comment on any rumors you may have heard about this actually being a buy-out of one company by the other. As will be clear when we do the role-out tomorrow afternoon this is a true merger, as signified by the new merged company’s name: SlatePoints AG.
(The AG stems from some German financing we brought in to help float the deal. We’ll also be dropping the “.com” suffix from the new company name — on the reasoning that that’s just way to 1990s for 2001 and sort of has the whiff of death about it, given the NASDAQ crash, and so forth.)
Anyway, you’ll still get all the same great content from the new combined venture. Tim Noah’s Chatterbox column is slated to be renamed “Talking Points, Jr.” as of May 1st. But Kinsley and I still have to have a sit-down with Tim and iron that out. Aside from that, most of the existing features and columns will likely continue as they are.
P.S. So what’s the Slate.com link really doing there? Well, something cool; but not nearly as cool as SlatePoints AG. I’ll toss up a post with the real score later this evening.
