From the NYT:

The editors of The Big Money, a new business Web site by the editors of Slate, had their work cut out for them Sunday: it was the day before their site opened, and Wall Street seemed to be in free fall.

But if it was not the most auspicious time to introduce a financial news site, the editors did not let on. “I think there’s a real opportunity now to tap into people’s interest and even anxiety about the economy,” James Ledbetter, the editor of The Big Money, said in an interview last week. ...

The Big Money aims to be something in between authoritative print sources of business news and the myriad of newly minted business blogs. A lean editorial team will be supported by Slate’s marketing, technology and sales staff members and, like Slate, most of the site’s content will come from freelance writers.

For instance, in an e-mail message on Sunday, when the main news was about the cloudy fate of Lehman Brothers, Mr. Ledbetter said the site would be “handling the Lehman saga in several ways.” There would be, he said, a summary of the coverage in Monday’s papers, a commentary by Daniel Gross about government bailouts and a column by Michael Lewis “on Lehman’s downfall as the unintended legacy of the Bear Stearns bailout.”

“Depending on what happens between now and tomorrow morning, there may be more,” he added.

The ambitions and the names may be big, but the market for online business news is “extremely saturated,” said Herb Greenberg, a former columnist for MarketWatch.com, The Wall Street Journal and TheStreet.com.

Mr. Greenberg, who left MarketWatch to help start GreenbergMeritz Research and Analytics this year, cited the struggles of Portfolio, the business magazine published by Condé Nast, to gain traction. “Everything takes a while in media — everything,” Mr. Greenberg said.