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
Hey man, Dire Straits rules! It's about time Slashdot posts a REAL article.
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?
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.
Wears army boots. So there!
"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!"
Hey man, don't rag on VCs and founders with more money than brains. They bought me a house, and a couple of very nice cars.
$100 an hour to write a content management engine for travelers to communicate with friends back home via cyber cafes? Sure thing. $75 an hour to manage a web server for a company whose business plan a first-year undergrad could poke dozens of holes in? Right away. You want to sell barbarque sauce via the web? Um, ok, I'm on it.
What do I think of your idea? Please don't ask me that, I'm a programmer, not a business development expert. You wouldn't want to hear my answer anyway. And no, I don't want to be an employee, despite the no-doubt incredibly high value your stock options are going to have next year. Maybe.
You went to Harvard? Wow. No, never mind. Where's my check?
Stupidity has been good to me. Others' stupidity, that is.
AC
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.
The three sure-fire ways to get your comment moderated as "insightful."
1. Criticize Microsoft in a way that's slightly different from the way everybody else is criticizing them today.
2. Tell the story-- truthful or otherwise-- of how you replaced some proprietary and expensive computer system with one based on Linux.
3. Give moderately detailed instructions on how to find good pr0n.