Editing Slate (magazine) (section)

=== Reputation for counterintuitive arguments ("Slate pitches") ===
Since 2006,<ref name=":1" /> ''Slate'' has been known for publishing [[contrarian]] pieces arguing against commonly held views about a subject, giving rise to the #slatepitches Twitter [[hashtag]] in 2009.<ref name=":2" /> The ''[[Columbia Journalism Review]]'' has defined ''Slate'' [[Sales Pitch|pitches]] as "an idea that sounds wrong or counterintuitive proposed as though it were the tightest logic ever", and in explaining its success wrote "Readers want to click on Slate Pitches because they want to know what a writer could possibly say that would support their logic".<ref>{{cite magazine |url= https://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/trolling_readers.php |title= Stop trolling your readers|date= October 16, 2014 |access-date= October 16, 2014 |magazine= [[Columbia Journalism Review]] |last= Goldenberg |first= Kira}}</ref>

In 2014, ''Slate''{{'}}s then editor-in-chief Julia Turner acknowledged a reputation for counterintuitive arguments forms part of ''Slate''<nowiki/>'s "distinctive" brand, but argued that the hashtag misrepresents the site's journalism. "We are not looking to argue that up is down and black is white for the sake of being contrarian against all logic or intellectual rigor. But journalism is more interesting when it surprises you either with the conclusions that it reaches or the ways that it reaches them."<ref name=":0" />

In a 2019 article for the site, ''Slate'' contributor Daniel Engber reflected on the changes that had occurred on the site since he started writing for it 15 years previously.  He suggested that its original worldview, influenced by its founder Kinsley and described by Engber as "feisty, surprising, debate-club centrist-by-default" and "liberal contrarianism", had shifted towards "a more reliable, left-wing slant", whilst still giving space for heterodox opinions, albeit "tempered by other, graver duties". He argued that this was necessary within the context of a "Manichean age of flagrant cruelty and corruption", although he also acknowledged that it could be "a troubling limitation".<ref>{{cite web |url=https://slate.com/technology/2019/01/quillette-claire-lehmann-intellectual-dark-web.html |title=Free Thought for the Closed-Minded |last=Engber |first=Daniel |date=8 January 2019 |website=Slate (magazine) |access-date=9 January 2019}}</ref>