SLATE ELIMINATES TODAY'S PAPERS; SWITCHES TO NEW FORMAT

Slate announced the elimination this morning of "Today's Papers", a feature that summarized and linked to news each morning from the NYT, WSJ, WP, LAT and USAT. The feature had run since 1997. It was how this blogger started his day.

In a post this morning, editor David Plotz announced that Slate felt it was time for change.

Over the next 12 years, journalism changed astonishingly, but "Today's Papers" didn't change at all. The column continues to be a brilliant condensation of one important aspect of the news, but it hasn't kept pace with Web news as a whole: It doesn't track the news as the day progresses, and it doesn't encompass all the ways people get their news besides newspapers (blogs, Twitter, TV …). We've come to realize that we haven't been doing the kind of aggregation most of our readers want.

The new format, the Slatest, will feature summaries and links to 12 articles -- or videos, or whatever -- published three times a day, at 7am, noon and 5pm.