Seeing Slate's continued success and the purchasing power of blacks, the Washington Post Co. has launched TheRoot.com, a news and entertainment site for people of color. Henry Louis Gates Jr., an African-American Studies professor at Harvard, comes on board as editor-in-chief, with folks like Malcolm Gladwell signing on to contribute.

Gates is also involved on the business end, with TheRoot teaming up with his own AfricanDNA.com, which is among a growing number of companies promising to link the black diaspora to its African roots through genetic maps. Readers of TheRoot are often directed to Gates' website.

Gates – and apparently WaPo – sees no conflict of interest, even though their new website (named TheRoot, after all) makes an explicit effort to focus especially on genealogy. Which is a convenient stance to take. (And given our own interest in black web publishing, perhaps our skepticism is also convenient?)