I don't know much about the economics of the publishing business - print or online - but Slate seems to have been chugging along fine for all of these years. Now it's owned by the WaPo and has partnered up with NPR. Most importantly, with a few notable exceptions, it's absolute shit.
If I were an evil genius trying to shore up the flagging fortunes of my little scrappy liberal magazine, I'd consider gathering up all the good liberal talent that was floating around out there and putting together a Slate Which Doesn't Suck.
Kneejerk contrarianism was always boring, and now it's become an absurd anachronism from a time when we had the luxury of pointless contrarianism.