Michael Kinsley

No, depressing trip down memory lane is our brand, but I thought we can, for just one last beat, turn to fonder memories, because this month at Slate we're celebrating Slate's 30th anniversary, and...

I was incredibly moved to see that the book is dedicated to Slate's founding editor, Mike Kinsley, who I know both you and I think of as like a mentor and a visionary and maybe my journalism dad.

And I wondered if you could talk just for a minute, Jacob, about what brought you to Slate.

I know it was Mike, but also what you learned here and how you think about it 30 years later.

But I'm so proud that Slate is around and thriving after 30 years.

You know, it's the only survivor from that first generation of the Internet zines or whatever, you know, people called them back then.

And in the early days, you remember, I mean, I got there earlier than you did because Mike Kinsley was my mentor in journalism at the New Republic.

And, you know, I knew I wanted to work for him.

They said, "Come back to New York, the air was safe," and clearly from the documents that we've seen, they had concerns.

You know, the, there's a famous line by Michael Kinsley, "A scandal in Washington is when someone tells the truth." We're clearly seeing indications that they were aware that there were problems.

I think what happened here is the politicians didn't want to admit that maybe they should have slowed down, maybe they shouldn't have brought kids back to go to school at Stuyvesant and the High School of Finance and other places.

Maybe they shouldn't have brought my mother, who was there on 9/11, evacuated over the sea wall.

Um, now that was, uh, almost an international incident, um, even though, you know, e- everyone knew that.

Um, it, it's, uh ... there's an old saying from the journalist Michael Kinsley that, uh, the definition of a gaffe in Washington is when a politician says something that's true.

[laughs]

[laughs] Now, by the way, that has been, um, made s- uh, somewhat obsolete by, uh, by Donald Trump, who has, uh, blurted out what in earlier times would have been considered gaffes.

I did a piece about divinity schools in America.

And I remember that Michael Kinsley put it on the cover with the headline, She's Back, God Comes Back to Divinity School.

And I had a lot of fun and I was also very interested in everything that you were doing.

But Cornell, thank you so much for coming and welcome to the Dishcast.

... 'cause if you had the A dash, it denoted that you were a temp.

But crazily enough, Microsoft had started Slate as part of its content strategy, and Michael Kinsley was the pioneering editor-

Mm-hmm

... and it was a very small, um, upstart magazine meant to figure out journalism on the web.