Slate translates the magazine for the Web: You have the cover with its big images and teasers, and a table of contents for the rest of the site. Look closely and it still resembles its print cousin.
So what if you actually re-imagined magazines for the Web? If you cover video games and technology, you get sites like Kotaku, Joystiq and Engadget.
Since they’re organized strictly by time, with the latest news at the top, you could call them blogs. But that’d miss the point. These are well-run sites with paid staffs that aggressively seek out and report the news – equivalent in journalism to a magazine staff, but publishing purely for the Web. They’re snarky, opinionated and authoritative. When anything happens in the world of gaming, down to and including the baking of video game-themed cakes, Kotaku’s on it.
It’s tempting to call it an online newspaper, but ultimately as a reader I go for Kotaku’s quirky voice and sense of humor, not the actual news.