* True/Slant's launch marketing, including an opening , focuses on the site's business and editorial processes and ignores its product. No one talks up this or that awesome post.

* Editor Lewis Dvorkin opens his post, "," by recalling Vietnam, Watergate, and Row v. Wade. Tradition and nostalgia don't fly on the Internet.

* There are no big stories waiting today for Web surfers sent to True/Slant by Mossberg and others.

* There are no big names to lure readers and generate buzz. By contrast, the Huffington Post launched with Arthur Schlesinger, Julia-Louise Dreyfus, and John Cusak's notes on Hunter S. Thompson.

* True/Slant wallows in insidery newspaper-employee jargon, starting with the site's intractable name and continuing with column titles such as "The Copy Box" and "Undisclosed Name." The geek-jargony "Alpha" atop the site's logo doesn't help.