michael "Mr. Excitement" Kinsley appeared on a Newsweek cover a few months back to promote his move from the East Coast to Seattle and to publicize Slate, the online magazine he was creating for Bill Gates and Microsoft. He was dressed like a sailor from a chowder can, holding up a dead fish.

He also consented to articles in The New Yorker, USA Today and Entertainment Weekly, not to mention interviews on Charlie Rose and The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. All of these public relations efforts, according to the New York Observer, "did not help his cause with the digerati."

But I think it was the image of Kinsley as The Old Salt, more than any other, that had the digital community (flamers that they are) rubbing their hands together in ghoulish anticipation. Kinsley wrote in the first updated edition, "We received more than 1,000 e-mail messages in just the first 24 hours after we launched the site." Poor sap! He must not have known what hit him!

A certain amount of gloating may be permitted in these virtual pages. After all, Salon was here first, and has been relatively unscathed by the rampant sarcasm to which the digital domain is prone. (To promote the launch of Salon, it's true, I did offer to pose for a major weekly dressed like Elmer Fudd, holding up a dead duck and grinning like a total moron. Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed. I'm only a contributor, after all. Folks might get the wrong idea.)

But there is a larger question here. How is a digital magazine different from a print magazine? The New York Observer, again, observed that "...Slate exudes a distasteful scorn for the egalitarian qualities that distinguish the Web from other media." Apparently, Kinsley's major sin was to act like an editor and determine the content of Slate based upon his own experience and taste. What a sap!

Everybody knows that content on the Web must be free -- free in both the financial and speech senses. We must be able to say any darn thing we feel like (as long as it's fiercely libertarian, of course). In the digital domain, moreover, such speech must spread from the bottom up (users that is) and cost nobody anything. This is in stark contrast to traditional media. There, information comes from the top down, from the fishermen we call editors and publishers. Writers are still fish in both worlds, in other words, but in one we're bottom feeders and in the other we're dinner.

Well, I don't know. I've been a writer for a long time now, and have grown strangely accustomed to the idea of being paid for my efforts (what a sap!)

Still, I realize that this is a brave new world. I must not only learn how to improve my writing (yes, grasshopper, even a middle-aged man is but a student), I must learn how to market myself, how to use the Internet as a promotional tool. Oh boy. I can't wait. There's nothing a middle-aged man likes more than a challenge. (Better than a heart attack, anyway, or at least equivalent to one.)

But what will happen to the traditional media? For an answer, let's take a look at several print publications which I happened to pick up last week -- Coin Laundry News and The Bingo Scene Magazine. (For the record, I perused them during the dry cycle at a laundromat located in the Sunset District of San Francisco, which for now must remain anonymous. Full disclosure: There was no scientific process involved; I was bored, and I had read all there was to read in the newspaper. I hope it's clear, however, that despite my basic tendency toward subjectivity, I selected these publications at random.)

What will happen to Coin Laundry News and Bingo Scene once the Information Age, like the Blob, consumes us all? The former features sentences like these: "At least once a year, it makes business sense to move out the washers and clean thoroughly," "Laundry investors should make it a point to review their leases," and "Inexpensive No Smoking signs are available at most office supply stores." How will prose like this possibly survive in the New Millennium?

I'll admit that the latter, being mainly a listing of bingo games in the San Francisco Bay Area, could easily be a Web site. But that would diminish the importance of filler.

"The Scene" (as I call it) features a Bingo Scene crossword and a wordfinder. (Would we find a crossword puzzle on a Bingo Scene Web site? Ixnay.) The magazine also features as a bonus "Words of Wisdom." These include, "Big secrets and big mouths don't go well together," and, "Don't be as concerned with others' behavior as much as your own."

I don't doubt that heartfelt words of wisdom, aphorisms, pedagogical anecdotes and other detritus of the oral tradition do occur on the Internet. But the oral tradition is now a digital tradition. Wholesome instructional stories are not generally a part of that tradition; snappy one-liners are.

So, as a serious writer, what's my next step? I don't know. I've been thinking of dressing like a black leather assassin -- sunglasses, Glock, severe haircut, you know, the whole bit -- posing with a dead rattlesnake, and grinning like a total moron. Would that make it as a Web site?

What do you think? Personally, I think I'm too old for that bullshit, but I'm open to suggestions. In the meantime, I'll be moving out the washers and cleaning thoroughly. It makes business sense, you know.