Slate is an online magazine, hewn from the crude grey mass that was the internet in 1996 as a joint venture between Microsoft and a real magazine, The New Republic. Slate enjoyed early popularity as part of the adult-friendly MSN technomaze, validating the center-left opinions of its readership that public radio could only hope to inform. The website's daily updates cover politics, and politicize sports, the low arts, news, and the doings of actual newspapers.