The Fray (Internet forum)

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For other uses, see The Fray.

The Fray is the collective name for online magazine pioneer Slate.com's user forums. Established in 1998, The Fray consists of roughly 150 distinct forums, most of which are associated with regular or occasional Slate features. In theory each forum serves as an arena for discussion of current stories from the feature desk ("department," in Slate parlance) with which it's associated.

The Fray may have been the first reader forum to provide content for its parent publication; posts from the forums are sometimes appended to their parent stories, and posters have on at least one occasion been tapped to participate in the semi-regular "Breakfast Table" feature. Forum moderation is handled by the Fray Editor, who writes a regular front page feature, "Fraywatch," which brings the best of recent Fray activity to the fore. The position has been held by British journalist Moira Redmond and film historian and critic J.D. Connor.

Some forums associated with discontinued or retooled Slate features exist in a sort of ghost world, separated from their raison d'etre but often continuing to thrive despite and in some instances because of the decrease in traffic. Among these "orphan" frays is the one which inspired this particular exercise in collective narcissism: The Best of the Fray. Affectionally known as "BoTF," the forum was once associated with what became the "Fraywatch" feature, and serves as a vehicle for good writers and thinkers to hone their skills at the expense of bad ones, and as a focal point for the public introspection and psychodrama that informs the Fray and other online forums.

[edit] Significance

The Fray opened for business in early 1996 and surpassed 15 million posts on 2005-06-30. Although reader forums are now commonplace, it has been claimed by Slate magazine staff that Slate's arguably early use of forums was nearly as innovative as the magazine itself, and possibly represents one of the first efforts to build reader loyalty by providing opportunities for readers to interact with writers and each other. While the latter opportunity has been far more widely realized than the former, Slate writers will occasionally participate in the Fray, and the volume of posts — approximately 10,000/day range — has built the forum into something of a profit center for the magazine.

The Fray may also have contributed to Slate's survival during the dot-com meltdown, primarily by keeping circulation high enough to encourage Slate founding editor Michael Kinsley and his patron, Bill Gates, to persist in the experiment until the magazine began turning a profit.

As with most experiments, the forum suffered significant growing pains, most grievously when Slate's ill-fated incarnation as a subscribers-only service prompted a steep decline in readership and Fray participation plummeted. An unpopular forum reengineering in 1999 prompted a cohort of Fray stalwarts to develop and migrate to The Mote, an off-campus alternative that still survives if not thrives. Subsequent changes in Fray management, practice, style and ownership have prompted similar outpourings of angst but no similar actions.

[edit] Notable participants

Instapundit proprietor Glenn Reynolds is probably the most recognizable Fray alumnus, having achieved fame as a conservative blogger. BTC News proprietor Weldon Berger was the second blogger to enjoy a White House press room presence[1] (behind MediaBistro's Garrett Graff[2]), while another Fray regular, BTC News White House correspondent Eric Brewer, became the first and so far the only blogger to ask questions of White House press secretary Scott McClellan.

More recently, the Fray appears to have served as a halfway house for the authors of Fafblog.

Several Fraysters have taken up residence at WikiFray.