MarketerView

Slate.com is introducing The Slatest, a cleverly named news aggregation service that will publish on 3x/daily publishing calendar, and killing Today’s Papers:

So what is “The Slatest”? The heart of “The Slatest” is the Slate Dozen: A list of the 12 most important news stories, blog entries, magazine features, and Web videos of the moment. The Slate Dozen is published three times a day during the week: at 7 a.m., at noon, and at 5 p.m. This three-times-a-day pace is perhaps the most important element of “The Slatest,” …

Before I explain what “The Slatest” is, a painful announcement: After 12 years, and almost 4,400 editions, we are ending “Today’s Papers.” We are also ending “In Other Magazines.” This is like unplugging grandpa from the ventilator: excruciating but necessary. We believe that “The Slatest” preserves what is best about “Today’s Papers” and “In Other Magazines” but is faster and more relevant.

This move by Slate at once recognizes both the continual nature of the news cycle due to the content distribution opportunities provided by the Internet and the value of news aggregators.

For contextual advertisers, more and more opportunities are created for better and more timely advertising as the news cycle gets faster and as that news cycle is “productized” by online publishers like Slate. However, after looking at the design of the Slatest, which is good, one wonders if there are too few advertising positions available at this point in time. That alone will be worth watching.

We’ll be watching The Slatest closely to see how well The Slate succeeds at delivering value with its new product.