Slashdot Mirror
Salon in Dire Straits
An anonymous reader submits this well-linked blurb:
"It appears the end may be near for Salon Media Group. Their auditors doubt the company can stay in business for very much longer. Despite recently reaching nearly 40,000 subscribers, they haven't been able to make up for lost ad revenue in a down market. As a result, they've accumulated a deficit of about $75 million. Their best known asset, besides Salon.com, may be The Well, one of the earliest and most influential online communities. I hope that it can survive if Salon does not."
Salon could do a _print_ magazine.
Have their online content lag behind the print for a month, and sell the magazine. Advertisers are comfortable with print. They know the way print works.
Then you just have to get the info out before it gets stale. Revolutionise the printing process so it only has a one month lead time instead of a three.... hmmm....
Oh yeah, I forgot, it's called "Wired". Oops.
Reeses
I guess the marketing model of making your ads get bigger and bigger and crowd your stories and then forcing users to switch to having to have a premium service to get acess to all the content just doesn't work.
Too bad. Too many have seen that as the way to go.
"Oh no, 3 horny women and only 2 condoms...Thank god I read slashdot"
A magazine seemingly aimed at every demographic. Too much of a broadsweep - ended up not being too liked by anyone much.
Hey man, Dire Straits rules! It's about time Slashdot posts a REAL article.
It's no /. and even though it's generally slanted for the left-thinking crowd, I'll miss Salon if it goes belly up.
They've had some very insightful articles and interesting columnists (I really miss reading Camille Paglia). The handwriting was on the wall when they adopted the subscription model. Most people aren't willing or even able to pay for content.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
A site like Salon, as excellent as it is/was, simply cannot make it by charging for content. Other then porn, content isn't something people will pay for on the web, especially what are basically magazine articles.
If Salon was serious about surviving, it should have canned it expensive SF offices and become basically a virtual company. Web space is cheap, and writer can live anywhere.
Too bad they couldn't see the obvious.
Give a man a fish and he'll expect cradle to grave fish welfare.
Teach a man to fish and he'll complain that you aren't providing lifetime fishing employment.
I have been pwned because my
I'll miss Salon if it dies, the website at least. I've never read the print version. There have been some interesting articles there. They are crazy to ask people to pay to see exclusive content online, though. No one will pay for something as intangible as a story on a web page.
How ya like dat?
I recently retired from the Board of The WELL's philosphical and bizzare parent M-Net. While it irks us to see them get more publicity than we get, it would be a shame to see them go. I wish them WELL. Especially because my email address is howardjp@well.com :)
auf Wiedersehen, good night. So... who cares?
I have spent many hours reading Salon. It's one of the sites I check every day. Even after they moved most of their content to the premium service there were enough interesting articles left in the free section to make it worth skimming. Unfortunately if they do go under, the only really interesting news/opinion webzine left will be Slate.
I wanted to support them, and thought about subscribing. But I've always had strong concerns about their financials, and was worried that after I forked over my 30 dollars that they'd go under. This is one of the reasons I'm reluctant to pony up money for any web site. There's no guarantee that even after I subscribe that the site will still be there for the length of my subscription. I know it's not much money, but still if I pay for a year, I want to know that the site will still be there at the end of that year.
Of course I don't know why anyone bought the stock. It was obvious that they had no real strategy for turning a profit. As a business Salon is a disaster. They put out the equivalent of a weekly magazine on a daily basis. It's a shame that quality content just isn't enough.
I'm not an actor, but I play one on tv.
my gawd, ho on earth do you rack up 75 mill of debt with a simple web news page. i think that north america (eurpe less o, perhaps due to no european coverae on tv) is in a general downward spiral for executives and management. i dont see how a manager orf CFO (besides that of worldcom or enron)can let 75 mill build up and no do anything. its just basic principal that debt is (more or less bad) and yet its more the case then the exception. business culture has to wake up and smell the BLACK, get back to some fundemental money making ideas and strats. i would have assumed that after the internet fall out of 2000/99 more companies would be under the eye of investors looks for strong BASIC profits. but we apear to still be wondering around with our eyes shut. i know this is not the largest debt by far but still for a (relative) small on line new mag, lets be serious. you cut costs, you fire people, even change format, or sell your tech that drives the site, or at least go seek a mindless venture cap to re-fund yourself. it all makes me SICK i say, SICK
While I'm glad to Salon go (despite some really well written pieces, whoever ran it was simply TOO focused on being Anti-Republican, even to the point of publishing drivel if need be. I, and I'd imagine lots of others, would have subscribed if it hadn't been for that), I'm concerned with what it means for the Industry of online publications, especially Slashdot.
I wonder what we can do as a community to ensure Slashdot's survival? Hopefully everyone has subscribed, especially now that they take credit cards!
(Turns out this was announced during the Blackout, so a lot of folks may have missed it.)
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
Maybe I don't understand business as much as I think I do, but whatever happened to growing a business. All these (especially internet) business that take a boatload of cash and thy to "hatch themselves into the world" fully grown keep going bust. How does a website that only hosts articles get many millions of dollars in debt before turning a profit? It's not like they have warehouses of inventory to maintain. It's a freekin' server cluster the content management and writers. Half the people reading this could probably build the business infrastructure in a month or so.
Marketing costs? Ok, ya got me there, but that many millions worth? How much are they paying their writers? How much Salon content couldn't they have hired english major to write at a fraction of the cost?
I think the world needs to start going back to "building businesses", which has become a lost art. Make the model work...THEN take it to the multi-million level. Not throw in millions, then figure out a model that works.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
"But seriously... George W. Bush placed all those huge annoying ads in our articles!"
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
... I really loved salon, its too bad it has to go, but I'd never pay for it.
The weird thing about Salon is that it managed to stop running all of the (funny) stuff I read on a regular basis right after I paid for premium service. All that's left now is complete crapola.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Salon is in Dire Straits? I thought they would have plenty of capital considering they get their money for nothing and their chicks for free.
Moderation Totals: Cheesy 80s=+5, Redundant=+1000
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Oh well. It seems Salon may be going out of business through faults of their own, and that's news. However, Emperors-Clothes is being attacked by media giants because they report the truth, and that's not news.
Have I missed something here?
I wonder when f*ckedcompany.com will appear on its' own site?....
Here the Link.
404 File Not Found
The requested URL (sig) was not found.
It's ironic that a left-wing magazine would have the kind of cash flow that conservatives want for the government. Too bad, so sad.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Salon in Dire Straits
from the partying-like-it's-salon1999 dept.
You actually went with this over "from the can't-get-your-money-for-nothing dept."?
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
Other then porn, content isn't something people will pay for on the web, especially what are basically magazine articles.
I disagree. I think people are not willing to pay the subscription on a regular basis in seamingly large amounts (even $5 a month per site is too much). But if it was a few cents here and there for an article or for a page of posts, people would be much more willing to pay. We need micropayments, and we need them bad. What I don't understand is why they still haven't appeared and spread, the market for them should be huge. The only explanation for it that I've seen makes me sad...
What magazine were you reading? It seemed to me that, for the most part, it had very lefty anti-establishment bent. Occasionally they'd throw a bit of right-wing in there just to keep people on their toes but I think it had a pretty clear bent.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Mirror here
I have been pwned because my
Is there something outside the marketability of political orientation that is a factor in this difference in success? Does political orientation give a business an advantage in a Capitalistic society? Or is it that Republicans are just looser with their wallets?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
While Eye Socket, Montana might be a little extreme, the fact of the matter is that their journalism could have been done in many places other than SF. I mean, do you think Ariana Huffington lives in San Francisco? If they want to find out about life in the big city, they pay some freelance writer in the big city to tell them about it.
I think they could have done qutie well journalistically had they lived in any of a number of other largish cities that weren't nearly so pricey.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
This calls for the lyrics to Skrewdriver - Only the Stronge Survive!
Hear hear. Mod this up, bitches.
That has to be one of the smartest humor posts I've seen on Slashdot in, oh, ever.
mogorific carpentry experiments
More AC idiots. Figures.
It should die because it is liberal? I see. You want no diversity of opinions. I can see how diversity would scare an stupid little AC like yourself.
When will people get it, that diversity of opinion is a good thing. Otherwise, the bullshit amplifies itself and all you get is bullshit.
Bummers, sad to see them go. Their quality was consistently good.
.25 cents per download it only to cover costs for your websites?
Seems to me to be yet another case of transition failure, trying to make square pegs go into round holes, etc. Charging subscriptions just hasn't worked on the web and this has been so obvious for so long but still the sites try it over and over.
Until the sites get wise and figure out a way to charge per article (10 cents, 25 cents, a nickle -- whatever) they're going to have a hard time. Same is true with other types of files. Ten cents per mp3 or whatever.
Paypal has a clue, now if they can expand it and make their service useful to both providers and end-users (customers) we could actually see some decent commerce start to develop on the web.
You OSS developers -- wouldn't you like to make
Granted, I'm thinking out my ass here, but until providers and end-users come to agreement over cost vs. value there will not be much successful web commerce.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
It has. Several times. One time I remember was when pud put up a porn site. He thought that it would be nice to do custom porn movies. It didn't work. He took it down after a short time. There have been other times, too.
Go to the site and do a search.
Sometimes I don't know why I try...
I *LOVE* Salon. I didn't realize they were this desperate...I know I should have subscribed earlier, but...do they have any chance now?
I don't want to throw $ into a hole if they're not going to make it, but if there's a realistic chance a subscription will make a difference at this point, I'll do it (and would encourage everyone else to as well...)
For people like me who are paid up till next year. lol
Posted by michael on 18:51 Wednesday 26 June 2002
from the partying-like-it's-salon1999 dept.
An anonymous reader submits this non-linked blurb: "It appears the end may be near for VA Software. Their auditors doubt the company
can stay in business for very much longer. Despite recently reaching nearly 4 Sores Forge customers, they haven't been able to make
up for lost ad revenue in a down market. As a result, they've accumulated an operational deficit of about $425 million. Their best
known asset, besides 3Dtextmaker.com, may be Rob Malda's Ass, one of the earliest and most revenue generating properties found on
Fourth and Main. I hope that it will still be available if Kathleen Fent is not."
--RWS
they had nice tech articles...if never in-depth...
werd to yo motha, muh nizzle.
Advertisers are comfortable with established print magazines. If Salon went to a dead-tree distro model, they'd be just another new publication competing for ad dollars and shelf space. The failure rate for new print magazines is pretty horendous.
Whatever number of 1000's are on the official roles of the WELL, there are essentially 500-1000 people that actively log in and use the service. There are a large number that have been online there for 10+ years that just couldn't live without it. The systems consist of 5 or 6 machines, the essential staff 3 or 4 people, and the required bandwidth ~10Mb (mostly for piping all the SPAM that comes with hundreds of 10 year old email addresses). Without being underwritten by Salon, WELL users might face fees in the range of $100-$200 per year to support the conferencing system.
Capitalism strikes again! Ah, this day is sweet!
I've subscribed to salon for almost a year now and think it is a great deal. For $20 a year you get a lot of content. Lots of stuff for us geeks as well. Look back in the past couple of months and see how many times stories have been links to salon articles and you'll see what I mean. A great site and worth saving.
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;
What other online media outlets are in the same situation?
I donated $5 to SpaceDaily for magazine articles, and i've donated to several webcomics. People tend to get upset when you tell them that they have to pay X amount or you won't be able to view it, while they're much more open about giving you some non-exact amount of money after they've already looked at the media and decided they like it. Whether or not the larger number of smaller contributions can counter a smaller number of high cost subscriptions, i have no idea.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
You have succinctly expressed the problem with Slashdot and its moderation system.
They had good writing. As a modest literary magazine, along the lines of the Atlantic or the Nation, they had potential. But no way should they have ever become a major public company. That was sheer arrogance.
There was so much of that in the dot-com era.
Let /. die. It's a joke.
Read the balance sheet. Salon has almost no debt. What they have is an accumulated deficit (negative retained earnings) of about $75M -- that's the amount of money they've lost since they were founded six-seven years ago. They've raised about $85M in investment funding in that time too.
Salon has done a heck of a job bringing their expenses down and developing alternative revenue streams -- all those things you mentioned -- unfortunately, they can't seem to lower expenses faster than their ad revenues have fallen. They currently only have about $1.5M in cash on hand and their burn rate depletes that in four or five months, hence the auditor's "doubt" about the company as an on-going concern.
What do you expect from San Francisco? And by the way, Slashdot seems to be just as anti-Republican as Salon. Most of the comments I see posted are by either by Socialists or Communists. Mod me flamebait if you will, but you must admit that it is a big sin here to admit that you believe in Capitalism and suppor those who try to make a living selling anything that has to do with intellectual property. Oh and God forbid that a company lay off people so they can stay in business. How many times have we seen someone post "Hey, lets open a Pay Pal account to supplement [name of company] so they can continue their [Linux, open source, free stuff] works."
That aside, Salon has some really good articles, especially when it comes to the entertainment industry, copy protection, and fair use. If Salon does go, hopefully those who cover such things might find even more eyes and ears in different outlets, perhaps even more mainstream outlets.
'Same speed C but faster'
I'd have sympathy for them if they diden't BURN THROUGH $75,000,000.00. The debt load alone will kill them, and the fact that their crappy business skill with most likly take down The Well is a real bummer.
Not if The Onion falls on bad times then that will truly be a shame.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Posted by michael on 18:51 Wednesday 26 June 2002
from the partying-like-it's-VALinux1999 dept.
An anonymous reader submits this unlinked blurb: "It appears the end may be near for VA Software. Their auditors doubt the company
can stay in business for very much longer. Despite recently reaching nearly 4 Sores Forge customers , they haven't been able to make
up for lost ad revenue in a down market. As a result, they've accumulated an operational deficit of about $475 million. Their best
known asset, besides 3Dtextmaker.com, may be Rob Malda's Ass, one of the earliest and most profitable commodities on fourth
and Main. I hope that it can survive if Kathleen Fent finds out."
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
75 million in debt / 40,000 subscribers = $1,875 per subscriber. Ouch.
Fill your hard drive with music, movies and pictures while you sleep.
That's all - 40K subscribers??? And of course they're bloated with snotty, know-it-all staff. I have many more subscribers than that, am a one-person operation, and make more and more every month!
Linux Champion Makes Business Move
SuSE's Dirk Hohndell to Sell VASoftware Stock
by Robert MacMillen
PHOTOS © GARY VARNER
For Immediate Release
As a pioneer in the Linux community and close friend to Linus Torvalds, Dirk Hohndel is far from a chameleon . A respected hacker who began contributing to Linux eight weeks after Linus Torvalds first announced the project, he now makes his living as one of the top executives in Germany's largest Linux company, SuSE A.G. With his guidance and business saavy, SuSE has a future. This business acumen leads us to ask: Why are you selling off your holdings in VASoftware?
LAM: It is noted that you plan to sell your remaining 1000 shares in VASoftware in August of this year. What is motivating this?
DH: After analysis we feel that they're currently not a profitable entity. We have watched them in a familiar struggle. SuSE was in a similar situation, but we had a product for revenue generation. VA is offering a free resource and supplying the support. Unfortunately their target market does not need their branded support.
LAM: How will this impact your operations?
DH: We forsee no adverse impact to our operations. Internally, we manage our own software development with a more robust propietary system. Additioanlly, we are not dependent on an outside "source" to modify our "source".
LAM: Speaking of open source, what impact will this have on the Linux community?
DH: Since Eric Raymond left the VA board, there has been a lack of "civil conscious". The stigma that VA has carried to the Linux community was not eliminated after the name change. We are concerned that VA has not adequately distanced themselves and their business strategy from the beleagured Linux community.
LAM: What about the GNU/Linux debate frequently seen on the OSDN site Slashdot?
DH: That is a nonissue. Unfortunately this bickering has created a schism in the commercial Linux community. There are forums for this debate and discussion. Ironically, the founder and the man that gave genesis to the kernel has offered the least debate.
LAM: Do you feel that that these issues are related to the fiscal challenges faced by VAsoftware?
DH: Absolutely, and this cost them our confidence in their solvency.
LAM: So you basically weren't making any money from your investment?
DH: The bottom line is that we feel that VA is not a viable investment. Perhaps with the resignation of Larry there will be more focus on the future and earnings. Larry was a visionary and brilliant man, I will hate to see him go. Unfortunately he was unable to meet the bottom line.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
While I'm glad to Salon go (despite some really well written pieces, whoever ran it was simply TOO focused on being Anti-Republican, even to the point of publishing drivel if need be. I, and I'd imagine lots of others, would have subscribed if it hadn't been for that)...
And I would subscribe to the Christian Coalition newsletter if they weren't so damn conservative.
Come on. They were a quality news site for liberals. If they gave in and moved to the center, they would be just another NY Times. It's hard to find quality news these days - either left- or right-leaning. I'll be sorry to see them go.
Actually, I just signed up for Salon premium this week. I think their writing is well worth the $2.50/mo that a years subscription goes for. And this is coming from a person who, at the age of 30, has never subscribed to a magazine in their life.
My
Limekiller
actually no, people hate micropayments. people like bills that come at regular intervals for predictable amounts. i don't want to have to guess if content is worth .05, i'd rather pay $100/mo and get blanket access to a ton of pay-per-content sites, similar to the way that i watch tv.
The problem is that you can't just put 0.01 on your credit card bill. The guy charging you is paying a fee.. there is a reason that bars have a ten dollar minimum on their credit card tabs. Any more, and they don't make much of a profit if any.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I read salon because they pick up on some interesting news items, and find some cool stuff, but 90% of their content is whiny women bitching about pop culture or political economic retrospectives. That or fad bashing (FOUR stories up right now about martha stewart) Its a shame that they couldnt diversify their audience, the 20 something liberals are getting jobs and becoming 30 something conservatives.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
it's andersen, not anderson
Micropayments haven't happened because they are a really, really bad idea. It is incomprehensible to me that anyone still thinks that there is some merit to the idea. The only explanation is that the micropayment wishers are dot-commers desperate for some sort of business model to keep them employed.
Nobody wants to be nickled and dimed around the web and presented with a surprisingly large bill at the end of the month. Nobody wants to surf while constantly being nagged to shell out nickles.
It ain't going to happen. Time to get on with your life.
> Mod me flamebait if you will, but you must admit that it is a big sin here to admit that you believe in Capitalism and suppor those who try to make a living selling anything that has to do with intellectual property.
In my experience, the only time I get moderated down to Hell predictably is when I make too vigorous a critique of exactly those things that you think are a "sin" to espouse on Slashdot.
I had a real good example 2-3 weeks ago, but unfortunately it has already scrolled off my posting history
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Slashdot.
Kuro5hin.
IGN.
I'd send Salon a few bucks but I shot my wad saving kuro5hin LAST month. They should have had their money troubles sooner..
Actually, I'm just kidding.. I've been a Salon subscriber for a while, if only there were more of us they might not be in this trouble.. I'd hate to see Salon go. It isn't the greatest site ever, but I think it fills a valuable niche.
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
Interesting. I see a good bit of that, but far more of people saying "so-and-so's business model was faulty", or how the "free market will sort everything out (no need to involve the federal government)". Perhaps we're reading different posts? I browse at 3+ (so obviously I never get to see my own few posts).
Give a man a fish and he'll beat you to death with it and steal your wallet.
Wears army boots. So there!
Right wing media functions on the same principle as infomercials.
Their customers arent the viewers but the people pushing the message. They make their money by ensuring that certain types of messages are continously pushed at the people.
Truly left wing media does not have that choice. There isnt some one that will make a lot of money if truly left wing agenda is pushed. So there is no one to pay for it. Sure most people will benefit. But that is the problem large groups of people have the collective action problem and cant take up media empires. Rupert Murdoch can.
It is true that Rush dominates the radio waves, it is also true that less and less people are listening to radio. So Rush is not on every damn radio station because people really like him, but because powerful people want him there, and they want him saying the things he is saying.
That being said there is another issue - what people call left wing media (CNN ABC, etc) is not really left wing. And if you use that definition left wing media is not doing that bad - i am sure in the nytimes they laugh at the ny post, and even after recieving hundreds of millions of dollars from a cult leader the washington times is nothing compared to the washington post (considered to be liberal for some bizare reason).
Truly left wing media is really rare and is usually actively resisted by powerful people including "left wing" media. Thus Naom Chomsky although he sells a lot of books, and sells out every public appearence he does, will have a lot of trouble getting a column published in the "liberal" ny times.
i don't want to have to guess if content is worth .05
That's just the matter of sites adapting to the new form of payment. Sites will provide descriptions of the content - the sites that don't provide truthful description or don't provide one at all, will go down faster then you can say "micropayment". Sites that provide good content (and good description for it) will make money and will rise. It's just that simple.
i'd rather pay $100/mo and get blanket access to a ton of pay-per-content sites, similar to the way that i watch tv
I personally hate paying $40/mo I'm paying for TV, 100 sounds ridiculous; so I really don't think many people would go for this. So it really just seems like the matter of controling your clicking habbits - I don't think micropayments for an average person would exceed $20/mo - I mean how many nickel pages do you have time to read in a day?
the AC was prolly just a neo-conservative disruptor from "Free" [sic] Republic
I like the salon, I read it daily or every couple of days. They are pretty informative, although they sometimes print (or upload) some stuff that is quite outragous.
Salon was a good Internet magazine. The real shame is, an effective business modle was not (and still has'nt) been developed between online magazines, readers, and advertisments.
Why is it paper magazine can be succesful with a solid subscriber base without ads that try to jump out and scream for your attention, and online publications can't.
I blame the ad industry, which is still way too young for the Internet. When they discover that success can be better measured in page views instead of click throughs, they will have grown up and decent content will be supported (Imagine if companies who advertised in triditional magazines only judged their ads based on how many people stoped reading and immediatly jumped up and drove to their store).
So, give it another 5 years until the ad industry grows up. I just hope something like Salon will start up at that point.
---
The Internet is generally stupid
Also, it must be said, their politics were insipidly honkey-liberal...frustrating and agonizing to people all over the spectrum. It seems that they never really got over society's wholesale dismissal of Clinton...their entire MO seemed to be driven by a desire to resurrect his reputation, even moreso than a desire to bolster the Democratic party itself.
Their tech column was fair, but it really did't break any useful news.
If they had been more balanced in their writing they might have attracted a larger audience, but their limousine-liberal articles became grating.
The problem is that you can't just put 0.01 on your credit card bill. The guy charging you is paying a fee..
I'm not suggesting to use credit cards for micropayments. Have some separate authority, have $10 on deposit with them (or pay it as a monthly bill) - kinda like PayPal. For them your payment is just the matter of moving a number from one record to another one - very cheap (both counting bandwidth and computational power). If nothing else works, go for digital cash, if I'm not mistaken that should be even cheaper...
"Left-wing media a financial failure?" by toupsie
***1/2
Why is it that openly conservative media finds financial success while liberal media seems relegated to the realms of popular and commercial ruin? This is the question asked by toupsie in "Left-wing media a financial failure?", a thought-provoking new comment by the prolific, seemingly right-leaning Slashdot reader. While this ground has been covered before on Slashdot, toupsie's thorough linking and sharp writing style make this one of the most competent treatments of the subject. However, readers looking for comments with more answers than questions would do best to look elsewhere.
As the comment opens, we are introduced to a variety of notable leftist sites, each of which has failed to galvanize its intended audience into a potent political force. As a counterbalance, toupsie then lists a number of policial media success stories, all of which have a strong and identifiable conservative bias. With the stage now set for conflict, toupsie comes right out and asks the question heretofore only hinted at: "Is there something outside the marketability of political orientation that is a factor in this difference in success?"
While the question is posed in an intelligent and inspiring manner, toupsie is careful to avoid conjecture, instead leaving the answers to his complex questions in the hands of the Slashdot readership. A few weak guesses are offered up to get conversation rolling, but it is difficult to believe that the author actually feels that way himself. While it leaves a taste of incompleteness is your mouth, toupsie's decision to leave answers for another day is ultimately a wise one. These are questions which have no clear answers. Including "answers" in his post would not only detract from the strength of toupsie's earlier questioning and cast doubt on his reliability, but would possibly reveal his own political bias. This could divide his audience and possibly endanger the entire post. While a more daring author might throw caution to the wind and state his own personal beliefs, toupsie prefers the safe route, and I don't think any of us could fault him for that.
Overall, it's a very solid post and I recommend it in its entirety.
"It stinks!"
They made a big deal out of the risque material, but it was pretty lame.
So then, when I had an income under $25k ($16k after fed/state/local/property taxes and not including gas/sales/dog/energy/phone taxes) I should have voted for higher taxes? Go figure...
Are you whining because the rich have tax shelters or because you don't have enough to put into one? Hmm?
hahaha
you mean the way he won two elections and then his vice president who lacks any charisma still won an election (well he won the election part anyway)?
Actually i'd say it's mostly libertarians vs. socialists, and almost everyone thinks that the democrats and republicans suck. Go liberal-anarchists!
At least mostly everyone can agree that censorship sucks and pot should be legal.
I suppose most of my exposure to Salon is their smear campaign of the company I work for - Clear Channel.
What's funny to me is that they spend an inordinate amount of time criticizing companies like the one I work for that do what they have to in order to stay in business, yet they are apparently unable to stay in business themselves.
Apparently in addition to not understanding the principles that govern the radio or record businesses, they're a little fuzzy on basic business principles in general... most notably that you need to make more money than you spend.
How the hell do you spend $75 million on a WEB SITE? Does Slashdot cost that much to run?
If that's how much 'respectable' authors cost... they're overpriced. If paying what you're 'worth' puts people out of business, guess what: you're not actually worth that much. Works the same with DJ's, though CC gets slammed for firing overpriced talent, putting together and using a low cost solution, and keeping the shop open.
Also: to respond to a previous comment: The reason commercial radio is dominated by right wingers and the left wingers need government subsidy is because the left wingers can't run a business to save their lives. Apparently the same holds true for left wing websites.
How does having yet another liberal outlet in a media that is already heavily liberal help diversity of opinion? If I want Salon-style Liberalism, all I have to do is open up The New York Times, the New Yorker, New Republic, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News...or if I ain't the readin' type, I can always get my dose of liberal propoganda from CNN, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, 60 Minutes...(in other words, from any "news" outlet except for talk radio and Fox News Channel)
I'm not saying that Salon should die, but its death will actually bring MORE balance to the universe of news coverage than its existence does...
Shame on Google.
I love the irony of having that post moderated down as "troll".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I mean how many nickel pages do you have time to read in a day?
I read on the average of between 1.5 and 2 full length novels (~300 pages) worth of data on the Internet a day.
That is on average, and does not include those days that I go about and digest entire medical dictionaries on the net just for the hell of it.
I would go through $20 a day easily.
Then the net would become just as expensive as reading books are (at around nearly $10 a piece!), I can easily go through two books a day (or three if I am really at it), so it would be $20 a day down the tube either way.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Has anyone here actually used the Well in the last two years? Lets just say that a few generations of web technology passed these folks by. Their boards are archaic and hardly functional. Even early versions of slashcode provided greater functionality.
If Citizen Clinton were to run for President tomorrow, he would positively mop the floor with George W. I doubt it would even be close.
Despite his painfully obvious failings, Clinton must surely be the most popular President in the past 50 years. More so even than Kennedy or Reagan: the bloom was long off the Rose of Camelot when Lee Harvey Oswald delivered JFK to a tragic death and the surety of legend. For both parties, Reagan's last term was one embarrassing disaster after another.
No, it's Dittohead hubris to suggest that the US ever rejected Clinton. Term limits retired Clinton, not the electorate. Voters barely rejected his proxy, and I strongly suspect Tipper puttering around the Rose Garden today if her husband had embraced his administration's legacy with anything firmer than a clammy handshake.
Instead, we are saddled with a second-string President whose policies ebb and flow with the warring factions that surround him, and whose squinty-eyed demeanor is mistaken for resoluteness.
Truely, our political system works best when we don't think about it too hard.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Of course when a site develops a real sense of loyalty and community, simply asking for a donation can yield a healthy sum of money - kuro5hin.org, for example, raised over $37,000 in two days.
While such a model is obviously not going to cover Salon's $11 million annual expense, it is an intriguing idea. Granted, I doubt it would work for Salon, it seems like such a proposition would work only for tightly-knit community oriented sites.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Maybe I don't understand business as much as I think I do, but whatever happened to growing a business. All these (especially internet) business that take a boatload of cash and thy to "hatch themselves into the world" fully grown keep going bust.
The company I work for (and helped build from the ground up) has been slowly but steadily growing for six years on the Internet. We started out by my boss maxing out a couple credit cards. Within a couple years, we were profitable. Did we then go buck wild with marketing campaigns and new ways to spend money? No, we just kept doing what we'd been doing, finding new ways to save our time using automation (and thus saving money). Our staff is still extremely small, but we have no bullshit politics in the office, and it's laid back.
Our favorite joke leading up to 2001 was that we were making more money than Amazon.com! *
I predict buy.com will be the next "big" internet company to go bust. As soon as I read that they were going to undercut amazon.com by 10% on all books, and do free shipping on ALL orders, I nearly fell out of my chair... shades of "Internet 1999"-style marketing tactics. It smells like desparation!
* Of course we were talking about net income, not actual revenue, but it's a valid point. Our business model is sound and we continue to grow and lead in our niche.
"And like that
What kind of crack are you smoking? If liberals watch more TV, why is Foxnews beating CNN in the ratings?
Right Wing radio suceeds for 2 reasons:
1)The socially marginalized who agree with Rush Limbaugh are less likely to work office jobs
2)Rush is a much better entertainer(whether your laughing at, or with) than the liberal blow hards.
(For the record, I'm libertarian, and don't associate myself with either the left or right wing.)
Practically speaking, the liberal mentality fits the poor to lower-middle class income group, because (in the USA anyway) the left focuses on taking your money away from you forcibly, and giving it to "the needy," such as all those DESERVING people on welfare.
So of course the poorer people in the country are going to be left wing... they want my tax money.
The right wing tends to be the richer side of things, they work to allow me to keep my money, and donate it to those organizations I wish, as I see fit. (Except I have to trade in control over my body for this financial luxury.)
So, to me, it makes perfect sense that leftist media have a hard time surviving, while right wing media thrive. Just look at the audiences' incomes. I'm sure there are studies out there showing average incoming levels of the two sides.
"And like that
In a year from now, we'll probably see many former Salon employees installing microwave ovens, doing custom kitchens deliveries, and moving refrigerators and colour TV's.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Linux is like pakis: it stinks.
That movie "Brewsters Millions"? (He had to spend so much cash in a short period of time in order to inherit much more cash with certain stipulations...) I don't think most people could blow $75 Meeeelion dollars even on a real company without turning some sort of profit along the way....Hell you would make all these crazy expenditures -- and you would start to get customers and sale products by accident somewhere around $25 Million...:) Hell you could create a business selling tumbleweeds or rocks and dirt delivered from the arizona desert in little baggies on the concord -- and one day a busload of Japanese tourists would show up at the doorstep....errrr....I ain't gonna make my quota of losing $75 million if these damn busses keep showing up!!! Ahhh....Lets take this business online if we really want to lose some big money....But damn....we have a product --- the tumbleweeds are flying of the shelf....we are overnighting these things to Japan on the Space Shuttle and still only $43 million in the hole....
Sorry -- I am no business man....But fail to see how a website can spend that kind of dough....(I am sure bandwidth and server costs are only a drop in the bucket.....) And what does this say about the 40K people who have paid??? That is real income --- yet they still can't make money....
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Slashdot people oppose people trying to make a living because they think they have a God-given right to take something which cost thousands of man hours of time and money to make, and steal it without compensating the investors who put so much money in to make the art in question. Leeches.
The reason I don't like Slashdot as much as I used to is because it isn't democratic. Moderations are anonymous. It is well known that the owners of Slashdot have the maturity of a 12-year-old who has ops on a channel in IRC; they whine about censorship they see anywhere besides Slashdot then turn around and censor posts they do not like here.
Kuro5hin looks promising; moderations do not matter as much, are not anonymous, and the process of posting articles on the front page is democratically decided.
Any other reasonable Slashdot alternatives?
I see these web pages as being the MUDs of the 21st century. Just as the 1980s and 1990s had the multi user dungeons, where most of them had few players, and only a few had a large community, web boards are the 1990s and 21st century's way of having an online community for people as pathetic and without life as myself.
Slashdot is popular because it was one of the first. I am getting the feeling, however, that Slashdot is slwoly starting to lose its user base and that people are starting to persue alternatives. Slashcode is obsolete; Scoop handles huge web communities in a more democratic fashion.
I really wish VA Linux (or whatever they are called today) would hurry up and go out of business so that Slashdot would die, and the large community which Slashdot has--slashdot's only asset--would go to a web site better managed for a community of Slashdot's size.
I am obviously posting this anonymously; I have a four-digit user ID which I have had for over four years that I don't want to see get bitchslapped. I know that the people who run Slashdot do not have the basic emotional maturity to handle any kind of criticism.
This reminds of Charles Barkley telling his mother that he was now a Republican. "The Republicans are just for rich people, Charles" she said, and he replied "Momma, I'm a rich person now!"
I recently found myself in a similar situation when my Daily self-published internet column finally became just too much of a drain on my finances and I was faced with shutting it down after seven years of work.
The subscription option was considered but in the end, just 2% of the regular audience said they would subscribe -- a number far too low to support the site.
However, I was very lucky insomuch as I managed to obtain a 12-month sponsorship from a local ISP which, while not covering all the costs, at least pays for the cofee, power, phone and some of the other outgoings.
Given the sad fate of so many great online publications, it strikes me that perhaps the secret to longevity and (ultimately?) profit may well be KISS - that's Keep It Small & Sponsored.
It strikes me that too many online publications focus on building empires rather than simply creating and publishing good content at minimal cost.
For example -- does Salon rent office space?
Why?
Surely a "new media" publisher would realize the enormous savings to be made by having writers work from home and email in their copy.
When I launched 7am.com, I ran the entire operation (2 million hits per day and a network of 200,000 third-party websites) on a completely virtual basis. No rented offices, no conference room, no company cars, no scooters -- just a group of hard-working people staying in touch and coordinating their efforts over the Net.
The Net may be a great medium for publishing content -- but it's an even greater way to slash your operating costs -- if you use it properly!
Hey,
Cities can be great as well. Just this evening I was at Carnegie Hall listening to live Jazz and friggin Chevy Chase was sitting next to me. How often do people living in the boonies get to discuss Modern Jazz with Chevy Chase?
I would never have met my girlfriend if I didn't live in a big city. She's from the boonies in Japan (although, since they held the world cup close to her home town I wonder how long it will remain boonies.) The odds of me meeting some Japanese chick on the other side of the friggin planet would be slim to nil if she hadn't moved to a big Merikan city.
I grew up in NYC and have been exposed to a plethora of cultures my entire life. I can eat cuisine from dozens of countries whenever I want. I can go to plays, see musicians perform and even catch the Mets game on the same day if I want to.
Cities have alot of problems and they are not perfect, but they do offer quite a bit of stuff for the taking if you are willing to put up with the negatives.
Besides, when I want to hunt or fish or backpack I go to the big mo'fo upstate new york area that is but a few hours away by rail or car.
Later.
it is mostly liberal dribble anyway. it wont be missed except by a few intellectual midgets.
-AC
I read a lot of people in this forum commenting "I read Salon but don't like the ads", or "I like other people to support my habits", or "I would subscribe but I bought crack instead".
You left and centrist surfers have no one to blame but yourselves when you have nothing to read save for Ann Coulterish drival.
Christ man it's only $30! How much was that crappy Moby CD or that XML book that you'll never read, that tattoo that you're gonna hate in five years?
Support your political perspective or join the dark side.
Beal
bamph
How to gain credibility as an indy news source:
Print stories contradicting whatever's on CNN, true or not. Unless CNN is reporting that the US bombed the wrong target or something. Then pump out the "incompetent government that can't do anything right" stories.
Print stories directly attacking CNN (again, no need to be truthful here).
Accuse them of trying to hide the truth when they slap you with a big slander lawsuit.
(Optional) Accuse the (incompetent) government of orchestrating everything from World War II to that parking ticket you got last week. Logic isn't needed, the only thing that counts is that the (incompetent) government has planned and controls everything. Except your little news establishment, of course.
Do this and you are 100% guaranteed to gain a few hundred fans, all raving about how great your accurate news is and how everyone else who has the time and money to research the stuff is wrong. Drag on the lawsuit to gain even more.
Looking at 300 pr0n pics a day aint the same as reading 1.5 to 2 novels...
Mod me flamebait if you will, but you must admit that it is a big sin here to admit that you believe in Capitalism and suppor those who try to make a living selling anything that has to do with intellectual property.
You won't be modded flamebait, but you're contradicting yourself. You say you believe in capitalism, which holds that the best distribution of resources comes from free competition. Then you imply that those who support capitalism must support government imposed monopolies in the form of intellectual property.
WTF?
I mean, that's the very essence of a planned economy- give monopolies to industry and trust them to still bother to serve their customers.
And lets not even get started on the small inventor crap. Everyone knows the ip system only works for those who can afford lots of expensive lawyers, and that means a few big companies call the shots. Much like soviet state industries.
I know this is all a bit off topic, but you seem like you're not actually a troll, just an angry conservative who hasn't thought through the princples behind the ip system all the way. The free market *demands* the dissolution of the idea ownership system.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
If a picture is worth a thousand words... <Insert goatse here>
I have been pwned because my
What do you expect from San Francisco? And by the way, Slashdot seems to be just as anti-Republican as Salon.
.
/. crowd is all for capitalism, they are just NOT for IMPEDING scientific advancement by placing artificial patents on old ass shit and charging an arm and a leg for it.
/. first. :D Ok maybe a second or even a third, but the /. crowd does not take action nearly often enough (besides /.'ing sites that is)
You kidding? The libertarians are strong as hell around these parts. . .
(now I wish that they'd just all go away. . . )
Most of the comments I see posted are by either by Socialists or Communists.
Commies suck. Period.
Mod me flamebait if you will, but you must admit that it is a big sin here to admit that you believe in Capitalism and suppor those who try to make a living selling anything that has to do with intellectual property.
Congrats on connecting two UNRELATED subjects.
The majority of the
Oh and God forbid that a company lay off people so they can stay in business.
Massive lay offs only HURT the economy as a whole which then further HURT the company that made the initial lay offs.
That and it is Just Plain Stupid to go after that extra buck after the initial first few million a year. Hell, if a company sees its profits only go up a few percentage points from one year to the next they freak the hell out and start laying people off! I mean come on, that it ludicrous! (Oh no!!! We ONLY MADE an extra 30 million this year versus last year!! The Horror!)
How many times have we seen someone post "Hey, lets open a Pay Pal account to supplement [name of company] so they can continue their [Linux, open source, free stuff] works."
VS how many times I have seen it actually happen?
I mean suggesting good ideas is easy, doing something about them;
ah;
now that would be a
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
If you think that site is anything but a silly place then you've missed everything.
Watching Cowboy Bebop in my jammies, eating a bowl of Shreddies.
such as all those DESERVING people on welfare.
.
Yah, I can see how you can have scorn for some lady whose husband just left her and her special needs child running at ~1k a month in treatments is being threatened to taken away to a publicly ran 'institution'.
Sure, deserves lots of scorn. I mean hell, she is just out for your money, evil evil lady, after your cash, can't let that happen now can we?
Those awful conniving poor. . .
Bleh. Fuck off and / or get a clue. Better yet, get poor and grow up with something besides dreams of getting rich. Many of the poor live and die poor so that their children can hopefully grow up to a better life; damn lot higher of a sacrifice then any amount of mere money that you could ever be taxed.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
..and balanced.
There's a very strident, shoot-from-the-hip liberal quality about their editorial style that really turns me off, and bespeaks a vary naive (Wahh! Waaah!) view of the world.
(Frankly, as a somewhat conservative guy, I find The Nation far more readable and entertaining. OT: I also like Chris Hitchens as a writer and personality. I'm amazed at his integrity, and how often I agree with him.)
Rush Limbaugh's site makes money. Connect with your audience.. you know the rest.
If Salon goes down, it will be due to lack of ideation, not necessarily a bad business model.
Tweak the books, that way you can hassle at least 2 billion USD without being noticed. Hire Andersen, they seem to have experience in these kind of antics.
Funding. Simple, really. Sell the "proof" for your arguements for about 10 times what it costs you to make. If anybody calls you on it (either selling the proof of your arguements for bloated prices, or that your "proof" doesn't actually prove anything at all), they're a member of The Conspiracy and should not be taken seriously. Or ignore them. Or call them an idiot that can't see the obvious due to years of conditioning by The Conspiracy.
Note to trolls: The above and previous comment are satire and shouldn't be taken seriously. Indy media can be right too (and often are). They can also be wrong (shoestring budgets tend to reduce fact-checking somewhat). They can fill in what CNN & Co leave out, and encourage CNN & Co to be more careful about what they say. They can also decieve you by faking stories, faking evidense, and then pleaing for help when they piss off someone in the process. Take everything you read on the net (hell, anywhere) with a very large grain of salt.
"...some lady whose husband just left her and her special needs child running at ~1k a month..."
yeah man, get a clue. nobody is taking advantage of america's efficient well-managed welfare system. what are you dumb or sumthin'?
-AC
Did you just call U.S News and world report a LIBERAL media outlet? If you sis, you've clearly never read it. It's about as liberal magazine as "Alan Keys is making sense" is a liberal telivison slow.
Sites like kuro5hin.org which, through careful donation drives, make 6 months of operating money in 3 days. Non-profits who are there for the people, who are lean and run well mainly out of the pockets of the people who're there?
Maybe a big business media site like Salon can't stay in business, but I'm sure that a leaner site could've. The Internet is all about the little guy, as Dan's Data's "Minnows 1, whales 0" argues. Until more people are online supporting a services model, you can't just base your entire revenue on a needing "just a few more" subscribers to break even.
Salon should've restructured about 74.5 million ago. They've lost a stupid amount of money.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
but all you need is some president to speak somberly of some grave danger and off go the trillions into the military.
No body even bothers to check if the money is spent to protect from that danger, if that is what we need to protect from that danger, or that the military is getting fair prices and not giving away money.
And if any one asks the above questions they are called unamerican.
Unfortunately conservative politicians do not really want to decrease government spending, they want to change it, but not decrease it.
They have a good article maybe once a year. They're going under since their writers and editors suck the big one. I mean seriously, I've seen people totally contradict themselves in articles.
Who cares if Salon goes down. Maybe if they had more talented people working for them, they would have more readers.
God spoke to me
Slashdot's userbase is its asset. Nowhere else you have such a broad spectrum of opinions, from stupid loosers to academics.
Dirk
Nope, it was only aimed at left/liberal Bush-haters. I am glad to see it go, and I have been waiting this for quite some time - hopefully it will die soon so that Slashdot will stop linking to it. (Slashdot links to salon.com but not NewsMax - nooo bias no sir.)
Go to hell!
Damn, it felt good to say that.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Wow! How do you spend almost $2,000 per subscriber on an online magazine. Are they buying premium priced electrons?
Living on welfare for year after year will NOT repeat NOT lead to a better life for your children.
Isn't that the radio station company that was on Slashdot the other day for reinforcing the RIAA cartel? Sounds like a nice place to work! Maybe there was something to the "smear campaign" if this is what the company gets up to. Personally I've never heard of it before but it sounds like something people should beware of.
Oh, and realistically, of course they're not spending $75 million on a "web site". High bandwidth hosting is around £400 per annum, with unlimited colocation plans around £800 per annum. Top newspaper article writers are paid on the order of 3 figures and top glossy-zine writers 3 to 4 figures. Say there's a full-time web designer (there's lots of cgi on Salon that needs to be maintained), a bursar and a director, each getting £20,000-30,000 per annum and that leaves £74 million to spare. So obviously, the only possible way to account for this figure is that there's an opportunist at Salon who realisis that people have _absolutely_ no idea how much it costs to run a e-zine Web site. This is opportunism, plain and simple.
Yah, I can see how you can have scorn for some lady whose husband just left her and her special needs child running at ~1k a month in treatments is being threatened to taken away to a publicly ran 'institution'.
Please tell me you're not so naive as to think that anywhere near the majority of people on welfare are as deserving of help as the example lady above?
Welfare is a piece of shit. This lady would be much better off if we all kept our tax money, and helped her out through a well-organized charity, not a government run bureaucracy that rewards those that are good at cheating the system.
"And like that
Can anyone please explain to me how the fuck an online mag can go though that much money? What's it all spent on?
I think there's a problem of terminology here. The lady isn't deserving of anything. If the country was a pond, she'd be the crud that lived on the bottom. But she's our crud and because of that we take pity on her.
We realize that it could be any one of us on the bottom of that pond, but we also need to realize that even the bottommost dreg can raise itself off the floor. The goal of welfare should be to encourage and enable those dregs to lift themselves off the floor with a minimum of assistance. Rawls expounds on this concept of the safety net, but IMO goes a little overboard advocating what amounts to be a neo-Communist state ala Finland or Sweden.
The welfare system is to be judged on how well it lifts people from the bottom and returns them to productivity. When people find themselves unable to escape from the jaws of the system, something is seriously wrong and probably lacking in the system. However, tossing the system wholesale is wrongheaded IMO. A revamping and rethinking of strategies to help welfare recipients rather than simply handing them a check would be far better than tossing the baby out with the bathwater and relying on private charities who are simply not equipped to help at this time.
I have been pwned because my
I'd be happy to pay 1 cent per page to read Salon, IF AND ONLY IF I could pay as I read by some mechanism. There's no way I'd pay up front.
The Internet needs a micropayment model - without it small services will die because people are just not prepared to take risks with credit cards and subscriptions to totally unknown and physically remote organisations.
A rational, articulate response? Quick, dbenhur, get out while you still can!
This has got to be the nadir of the internet content crisis. The amount of whinging tight walleted american whingers commenting here about how great Salon has been but how I'd never pay for it, makes me sick. For fu"£s sake it's a quality magazine available fresh online every day for 10 cents a day. it's not as if you are breaking some sacred vow by buying content; face the truth, how much money leaks from your wallet to Gates each day? To Murdoch? The Only thing they were really charging for was domestic political content, well you'll get plenty of that for free now.Enjoy. The bottom line is that if you are not willing to pay for content you will only get crap and babble, if you don't believe me look at slashdot this time next year ;)
Liberal, right wing, left wing, Democrat, Republican, Randist, etc.
All different roads leading to the same dead end street -- slavery and exploitation.
Just the name a bunch of FAGS would choose. So fem and so gay. Let these fuckers die and stop glamorizing a stupid lifestyle. They had some goosd stories? Bullshit, they did not, Rehashed diatribes rewritten. Fuck them and do it hard.
seriously, does anyone give a shit about this stuff anymore? Dont people evolve to an opinion on stuff (abortion, human rights, tax etc) based on (mostly) their experience? I`m not sure many people think `i'm left wing, i must do this`. Its just a big turn off. What if, like me, you hold a mixture of views - higher tax, for example, but anti-mass-immigration, to pick a so-called left and right wing view respectively?
Whenever I go to Salon.com, most of the good sounding articles are `premium` and I`m expected to pay for them. And some of the free ones have ads which you cant look at without disabling Junkbuster, so I dont bother. If I could read half the article for free, and pay for the second half on the spot (ie not a subscription), then i`d go for it.
But theres no internet-wide micro-payment scheme worth using, is there? Oh well, maybe next year. Lets hope Kuro5hin etc can hang on until then, eh?
...as if anyone will miss it.
Liberalism enslaves.
I'm still working on a clever footer.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What's up with you today, man? You're better than this. What was this all about?
I like Salon. I hate Salon. I would have purchased a subscription for Salon a long time ago exept that I find about 20% of the opinions to be offensively ignorant. I go read day by day, every day and I used to get excited. When they started having problems with the business side of things, their reporting changed and the slant in the articles changed to be more sensationalist, but then, they tried to make it sensationalist for pseudo intellectuals... ..and all of a sudden, I found Salon in a category between heaven and hell because I just couldn't support the demonic 20%.
I wanted a thinking paper. A living document put together by living individuals except they chose the blue pill.
Too bad.
How about giving them some cash?
Speaking of which, how healthy is Slashdot at the moment? All sorted out? Or still burning capital waiting for the ad market to recover?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I liked Salon. There was some real talent over there. If a magazine like that can't stay in business it hurts my faith in the world.
We're on the road to Tycho.
A bunch of people paid millions to make an establishment mouthpiece to celebrate the Clinton years. It was born to lose. It was cross between the Washington Post and the National Enquirer. What as the point? How much do you need to spend just to nod when Clinton says "I didn't have whoopy with that nekkid girl right thar".
They went from being Clinton cheerleaders to Bush boobirds. Oh, there's a novel idea. Who would have thought of that?
Another yawner hits the gutter. Wake me when the street cleaner happens by.
And the WELL? I'm going to pay $15 a month for THAT? Sheesh....
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
in a nuthshell. That and the conservatives organize better. There never was a real "liberal media conspiracy;" that was just responsible journalism (one of the things conservatives hate the most) - but there's absolutely a conservative one. The liberals, having somewhat higher moral standards, never quite got their heads around how you have to organize a propaganda machine to stay in the political business.
Oh, they run party papers just like everyone else. But they shied away from the kind of antics Murdoch is perpetrating. They are, of course, paying the price for not being cynical enough.
I don't know if Salon fits into the "liberal supporter" camp; I think it's simpler than that, and they just generally hired good talent and edited it bravely. The democrats may feel just as threatened.
-David
I'm surprised no one over on The Well can come up with a solution to this. After all, we've been told for years how amazing and influential The Well is/was and how incredible and smart the people on it are.
I got the first notice that my subscription was about to expire three weeks ago, and I responded with a letter to the editor. This is pretty much the letter:
Dear David,
Thanks for the reminder.
I have been thinking about this for a while. I have enjoyed many good articles in Salon magazine, but it wasn't really for my own enjoyment that I signed up. It was to support independent journalism. I find the thought of not having professional journalists and editors working on non-mainstream material alarming.
There has been many interesting perspectives, presented in Salon.
Yet, I don't think I will renew my subscription. For one thing, I think that online independent reporting can't survive with propriatary standards taking over the web. With the uncertain status of Flash, I really think you are shooting yourself in the foot by promoting it. If it had been for a purpose, I could have understood priorities leading to the use of Flash, but for *picture galleries*....? No way. The use of Flash in picture galleries is likely to hurt in the long run. Yes, I've heard your arguments. I know we have to agree to disagree. But you don't want to take the chance that I'm right.
The quality of some articles has been low, but I guess one cannot expect to agree with the editor all the time.
However, "Love Collision". I'm an astrophysicist. I would say, consequently, I'm a skeptic. I'm also extremely anti-authoritorian. There is little that upsets me more than unquestioned, old dogma.
English is not my native tongue, but I really tried very hard to find some kind of irony or satire in Love Collision. At least a bit of humor. But all I saw was that old astrological writing. The most surprising thing about astrologers are their inability to ever surprise. Yeah, I know mainstream media makes a buck on this, but Salon!?!?
There was a good article I once read, I have this weird feeling it was on Salon too, it was about how there are no short-cuts to love. I can't see any substantial difference between this coloumn and the rather big self-help industry. There is very little value in either. The short-cuts they sell, just aren't there. There is good reason to ask whether the advices they sell really bring happiness. Astrology, with it's ancient dogma, does not provide anybody with any good answers, and so, it is just as likely to ruin a love-life as establishing one. It is immoral to make money from selling something that unfounded. And my money will certainly not fund it.
>As you know, Internet publications are ruled by the same economic
>realities as any other business. If we didn't charge for our premium
>content, we'd be forced to shut down.
Certainly, certainly. But I would much rather like to pay by micropayments. One of my favorite lines nowadays is that "we have to give up free beer to get free speech", meaning we really need a payment mechanism between content producers and end users with the fewest possible links in between, and we need that fast.
>Loyal subscribers like you are Salon's lifeblood. In return, we offer
>you something quite special: a truly independent source of
>journalism, beholden to no one, that never shies away from the truth
>and never insults your intelligence.
Well, either there isn't much intelligence in my brain after all, or my command of English is a lot worse than I thought, or "Love Collision" certainly does.
Well, my support for independent journalism continues. But in return, I ask that you do not fall for the money-making tricks that mainstream media does. Astrology is perhaps one of the examples where mainstream media is the most corrupt, so I don't feel you have accomplished what I had hoped for.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I just got an email from Charles Taylor, a contributing writer with Salon and with the lead piece today about Ann Coulter's new book, and he told me that he was unaware of any problems. I guess he was the only one in the office not to get the news...
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
Sure they might go bankrupt, but rather than going offline and disappearing, it's more likely that they'll get bought out by some big media company -- TW/AOL, MSFT, Disney, who knows. After a little housecleaning and a makeover, they'll get re-launched. People will complain that it isn't the same as it was back in the day, and in truth it probably won't be.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Another libral biased rag goes down. Only a 50,000 to go.
Actually, no. Picospan is still more powerful, and faster, which is amazing since it was written in 1983.
and so are you if you are bold enough to admit in public that you work for them.
Good riddance... the left bent of everything they post, combined with popups and huge adds (translation - poor web design for the sake of adverts) and the 'community' of drug smoking liberals that haunted it's shell are not going to be missed.
I wanted to, but they require cookies
actually, no, the Well boards can't do half of what slash 0.01 could do.
Uhm, have you used it? I have written entire custom filters to block users, or specific content, or both. I have the choice of any editor I want, and the ability to switch editors in the middle of a post! If I am writing a one line response, I stick within gate and when I want to write paragraphs of text, switching to vi is a no brainer. I can customize the display of comments in ANY way I want, not simply within the silly green and grey framework. Or how about the REALLY neat ability recently developed by Dr. Jan Wolter to read and post to one PicoSpan/YAPP site from another? Let's see Slash let me post to Kuro5hin without bringing up a new window.
But then again, I have put in a combined fifteen years on these systems. I know them inside and out.
Good riddance!
Remember, in conspeak, "objective" is the same thing as "liberal". "Conservative bias" is "objective" now. Do you have an article that tells both sides of the story? That's liberal. Do you have a story that tells the conservative side of the story? That's objective.
Simple, really.
Hey folks, the tip that the parent poster knows NOTHING is that he called the right-wing CNN a liberal media outlet.
What I'd like to know is, how the hell do they have 40,000 subscribers at $6/month and not be in the black?
Sigs are awesome huh?
No one forces you to read anything. If you don't like it you don't have to read it.
Now go back to listening to Rush Limbaugh and polishing your gun collection.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I am a happy subscriber to Salon. The articles are very well written by both "left" and "right" points of view. Larger in depth articles about relevant issues and events of today that resonate with me even now. I wish there were a database I could access! I am far more informed about what's going on in the world than before I subscribed to Salon. I greatly wish they would continue to exist, in any form.
Hmm, 40,000 subscibers?!!?! that's nothing! It's so cheap and the articles are NOT found elsewhere on the Net and certainly you can't find research and journalism of that caliber from the media wonks at CNN, MSNBC, etc. Forget it! And the comics! This Modern World should be read by everyone.
I've often wondered why there hasn't been an emergence of more nonprofit powerhouses on the web.
.org sense.
.org sites I am aware of are associated with organizations associated with a specific product or issue (e.g., Mozilla, "save the whales").
I don't mean nonprofit in the sense of not making a profit, I mean nonprofit in an
It seems to me that most of the
Why haven't we seen the emergence of web nonprofit news organizations? Web equivalents to NPR?
I always have wondered if Salon would have been more successful financially if they had been their nonprofit equivalent.
Wired was the first source AFAIK to describe the Well as "one of the earliest and most influential online communities."
So far the only influence of the Well is the self-agrandizing perspective of those who belonged to it.
Usenet ran circles around the Well, not to talk about the early Internet. Heck, Joe McCarthy mailing list at MIT was more influential than the Well.
So put a lid on it. The Well was a neat local BB in the Bay area. Nothing more, nothing less.
I'd say, judging from Enron and Worldcom, Republican wallets are certainly more open for "deposits"
A revamping and rethinking of strategies to help welfare recipients rather than simply handing them a check would be far better than tossing the baby out with the bathwater and relying on private charities who are simply not equipped to help at this time
The only reason charities are not equipped at this time is because everyone is paying exorbitant taxes. If people were able to keep more of THEIR money, they would be able to give more to the charities they prefer, rather than the U. S. Government Forced Charity.
"And like that
No anonymous posting. The motto on The WELL is "You own your own words." Anynymous posting encourages cheap potshots and detracts from the reputation based system when you can post as yourself one time, but then hide behind an anonymous posting in the same thread. Letting users turn off their karma counter for a minute to post as an Anonymous Coward detracts from the system's ability to host an intelligent discussion on anything, let alone something controversial.
Persistence of discussions. There are active discussion topics on the WELL that go back to '85. You can read stuff that predates public internet when WELL users from accross the country were using the Compuserve Packet Network to connect in from local POPs. Here on Slashdot the half-life of a discussion is generally a couple days, then the action moves on to the new topics. Slashdot's karma system rewards those who are the quickest to jump into a discussion, while more thought out posts get less weight if they come in late. The ability to take a look back at how people were talking weeks or months or years ago on a topic is a really cool thing. Perspectives change, and persistent threads on a topic, rather than just new threads based on the latest news story or press release allow easy reference back to previous discussion.
They still got all their money for nothin' and their chicks for free. That's the way you do it.
Micropayments will not happen They are technically infeasible right now. There is no infrastructure in place to facilitate them (credit card companies charge the same amount for a $0.05 charge as they do for a $5,000 one) and there's no demand for it.
Moderators: the parent post is not insightful. A few of the replies are.
you can't make bucketloads of money of a mediocre website, nor should you be able to. (of course i'm assuming /. makes less than bucketloads of money).
Let's compare some numbers from Salon's 2001 annual report, available under "Investor Relations" on their web site...
Suddenly, I think throwing $20 at Rusty is a pretty good buy...
yeah and tomorrow you will claim "but but... the liberal media is a myth!" Thanks for pointing out that liberals dominate the traditional supposedly "un-biased" media.
---
Maybe there's an alternate reason for it.
Nobody wants to RECEIVE micropayments. They all would much rather have macropayments. Wouldn't you?
The problem is, the overhead of dealing with micropayments is not worth the revenue one would get. The content market is absolutely certain that they can get customers to pay $30/yr for web subscriptions. Even to the point of going out of business for lack of trying the alternative.
They don't feel it's too much to ask, and for some screwy reason, they feel that people should be able to afford that kind of money - because, surely, they can, why can't everyone else?
Steve Jobs thinks it's trivial to drop $3500 on a decent system. Why doesn't the other 95% of the computer market think so? Because there's a less costly alternative (never mind the value, TOC and features arguments).
But in the web-content space, pretty much all the free stuff is going away lately. So soon, the whole internet is going to drift into the AOL-world of pay-for-content (AND look at ads). Just like cable TV, print magazines, and newspapers.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
So why haven't the forces of capitalism and free market kicked in? I mean these companies are literally dying with this approach, how come they still haven't tried the micropayments? I don't think it's that they want macropayments so bad - it's that they don't have the option of micropayments - nobody is offering such a service (amazon has something similar, but the scale is still wrong). And nobody is offering such service because very few have what it takes, namely the ability to provide a good user-interface for it - otherwise it wouldn't fly. The only company that can do it would be MS, and the only reasoning for why they don't do it (see the parent post) is sad in its lack of future and options...
Does anybody have any ideas for how micropayments could be done without MS, and other reasons for why nobody is trying them?
From the article:
In fiscal 2002, Salon recorded a net loss of $11.3 million
or did you mean to say "debt"?
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
But most people don't fall into either of these categories. People's political opinions depend largely on self-interest, which means that rightists tend to be rich and leftists tend to be poor. (Even the exceptions are often determined by perceived self-interest: lots of poor people believe that they will some day become rich, and so support the right-wing, while many wealthy people want a social safety net in case they should become poor, and so support the left-wing.) The rich have more money, so right-wing media can charge both their customers and advertisers more (as the audience represents a higher-spending demographic). That's why Salon is struggling.
Of course it is rather hard to run any sort of an ORGANIZED system off of non-stabilized charities.
/. posted about. I'd suck wouldn't it? Heh. Relying on public awareness to run the world would NOT work.
Not to mention that your charitable contributions ARE tax deductable anyways, up to some amount after which you are paying for the running of the rest of the government.
Quite frankly relying on only public contributions would result in charities becoming corporate like ad hogs, since only those charities that where most recognized would get contributions.
It would be like having a million little red crosses running around, but even worse, since there would actualy be NEGATIVE incentive to help those cases that are not in the limelight at the time.
There are a lot of government programs making a big difference every day that you do not even know about. If these programs relied on publicity and pure public support to continue running, then they would be doomed.
For a half baked analogy, imagine that if the only political issues that even came UP where just the ones that
Now I DO agree that a lot of government programs are rather redudent, as two or more people may get the same idea for how to help other people and petition various sections of the government for help and aid in accomplishing their desired goals, and then succeed in getting that aid, but that all calls for better organization and communication, not throwing away the entire system.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
and then any one who ever went there would pony up.
dumbos.
it is to expensive. When you convert Australian dollars to US dollars it is just too much to justify.
Goodness knows how expensive it must be for Brazillan's or Mexicans or Pakistanis! I wonder how much there readership fell when they went subscription? You can't sell ads if you aint got enough readers...
I've missed the great political articles on Salon for a long time now. But the music died when the $$$ subscription started.
* * Always question "the National Interest" - 9 times out of 10 it is a cover for evil
Actually, anonymity provides the freedom to post an unpopular or controversial point of view. Most ACs are people too lazy to log in, don't wish to have an account, are posting goatse links, etc, but they start at a score of 0 and crap generally gets modded down.
I'd argue that poor moderation (*cough*slashdot*cough*) is a greater detractor.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
After years of losses and more recent struggles with sagging revenues that have forced Salon to reduce its staff and cut salaries for remaining workers, the company said its auditors had "substantial doubt" about its ability to continue as a going concern.
But what about all the money for nothing, and the chicks for free?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Contrary to reports, Salon is not near death. Check it out:
http://www.poynter.org/medianews/extra17.htm