Back in September, we let you know that the Washington Post Company was looking to purchase the online magazine Slate from Microsoft and bring it under its wing.

Well, it’s now officially a done deal. Slate Editor Jacob Weisberg penned a goodbye letter today, letting readers know that they’re on to new and exciting things, though apparently not that much will actually be different:

Readers are likely to notice little, if any, change in the magazine. All of our senior editorial staff and writers are staying on, and most of the junior ones as well. Although the move creates exciting opportunities for us, especially on the business side, neither the new publisher nor the old editor (who is also staying) envisions drastic editorial changes. Washington Post Co. Chairman and CEO Don Graham and his colleagues have impressed upon us that they’re buying Slate because they like it the way it is, not in order to make it into something else. They’ve assured us that we will retain our editorial independence and stay separate from our new sister publications, which include the Washington Post newspaper, Washingtonpost.com, Newsweek, and Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel. Slate is not going to be merged, submerged, bent, folded, spindled, or mutilated.

Microsoft apparently put Slate up for sale over the summer because they had come to believe that the online mag and its editorial talent would flourish more as part of a journalism/media company than a technology/computer one. And we think they’ll be right at home with The Washington Post Co.; according to a press release put out by the organization today, “Slate reaches a highly educated and influential audience of readers who use the web as a primary source of news, information and commerce. According to Nielsen NetRatings, Slate had six million unique users in November 2004. Slate’s audience is similar to the audience of other WPNI publications (washingtonpost.com and Newsweek.com).”

Here at DCist, we think it’s a sweet deal for both organizations, as Slate could bring the Washington Post’s web site more traffic while the Post could bring Slate better ad sales (and hopefully some actual profitablity, which has long been the holy grail for most online publications).

Howard Kurtz of the Post has some more information on the sale and its ramifications here.

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