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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
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.
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.
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
I wonder when f*ckedcompany.com will appear on its' own site?....
Here the Link.
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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.
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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.
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Most of Salon's expensives come from actually paying well-respected and well-written authors.
Writers (professional writers, which you are clearly are not) do not work for free. Good writers (which Salon has in arguably larger numbers than ANY other news-op-ed-online-only publication) are very very expensive.
So it's more likely than not, not about location, or about offices or management. It's about paying the writers for the great thought-provoking content (when have you noticed a grammar or spelling error on Salon?) and bandwidth, in that order of cost.
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.
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.
Most of Salon's expensives come from actually paying well-respected and well-written authors.
Fair enough, but $75 million worth???
$75 million dollars is a gargantuan amount of money, enough to employ hundreds of people for years. They had ad revenue and 40,000 subscribers too. Incredible.
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
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.
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.
It's about knowing your market.
I used to read Salon (still do, in fact) to get the left-wing spin to counter my innate right-wing bias.
(Aside: Never had a problem with their intrusive ads, because I always have Javashit and Flash turned off. Otherwise I would have stopped visiting them a year or two ago.)
Around the time of the recount battles of 2001, it became clear they'd dropped any pretense of editorial balance and were just an arm of the Democratic party.
Nothing wrong with that during an election battle, but they kept doing it. My biggest disappointment with Salon is that the articles most likely to challenge my beliefs are the premium ones, and I don't see that much value for the money.
So I never subscribed. And now, the articles most likely to either be rejected as Democratic propaganda (the tiresome "Bushed!" series), but with a small probability of changing one's world view are labeled "Premium".
By way of personal example, I used to be a fervent drug warrior, but today, as much as I still think drugs are for idiots, I believe the money could be better spent on HomeSec. (OK, so Salon would also have a problem with spending the money on HomeSec, but we'd at least agree that much of the money spent in the WoD is wasted. 2-3 years ago, I'd have argued otherwise - that is, for spending taxpayer dollars on both the WoD and the WoTerror. Now I believe we should scrap the WoD because we can use the same resources elsewhere. No government/law-enforcement jobs or budgets need be cut, and frankly, I think the cops would have more fun hunting down the real badasses trying to kill us than comparatively harmless potheads. Salon might disagree with my solutions to both problems, but at least they got me thinking :-)
But the probability of finding a series of those ideology-changing articles (now locked-off in the for-pay ghetto) was sufficiently low that I couldn't justify the subscription fee.
Which is a bummer.
From a business perspective, I can see why preaching to the converted (e.g. the lame "erotica" content along with the regular US/Bush-bashing dreck) makes business sense for Salon.
But from the standpoint of a guy who loves a good political/economic/cultural debate, I lament the loss of the alternative standpoint that Salon used to provide to all -- and now only provides to its own narrow audience.
Word to the Dems and Greens: You wanna change the world? Fund Salon, but give them editorial freedom and cut 'em slack when they don't toe the party line. The rest of us can tell the difference between a genuinely-held position and shameless propaganda -- so stop trying to pretend otherwise.
Word to the Republicans: Salon's made their bed, let 'em lie on it. Their loss is your gain. Carpe diem, and don't make the same mistakes they did. All their blogspace are now belong to you! :-)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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 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.
"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.
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)?
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.
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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.
Just look at Slashdot :-p
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
(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!
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.
While I was not surprised by the 40,000 number, it's pathetic nevertheless considering the amount of promotion, name recognition, etc that Salon has.
:-(
Wall Street Journal on-line has hundreds of thousands of paying subscribers so surely one would have expected Salon to at least be well into the six figures of subscribers too.
Heck, many lousy porn sites have more than 40,000 subscribers and some charge upwards of $50 month!
Bottom line is there's money out there, but Salon's content/presentation just isn't compelling enough for most people, including myself, to pay for it.
Salon would do better revamp their on-line advertising presentation and instead go with more "in-line" ads (text/small images that complement the content - like Google uses) that are targetted as opposed to the mostly generic ads they run now. Such a change would lead to better ad response, leading to more ad revenue, and more time spent on the site by visitors - the more time a visitor spends on the site, the more likely it is they will subscribe.
Rambling on a bit here, but many "mainstream" sites have taken the wrong approach with their advertising presentation. Many of them think that because adult sites have success (though debatable) with pop-ups, ad loops, flash, etc that they will too. Adult content is very impulse driven and something that lends itself to "hardsell"...and the other aspect that many "mainstream" sites don't consider is that most places that run adult ads don't really want the visitor to come back...they either want the person to buy or get the hell out. Salon and other "mainstream" sites on the other-hand depend on repeat visitors and good public relations. Bombarding their visitors with tons of generic and annoying ads isn't exactly a formula for success and is costing Salon more than it's gaining them. Too bad they just don't get it
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!
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...
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!
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!
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.
b) Culture is more than "being able to eat at dozens of cusines". Hard to believe, I'm sure, but it's true.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The truly sad part is, this isn't flamebait or trolling!
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?
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
That's right, Slashdot doesn't usually link to NewsMax. Slashdot also doesn't usually link to KKK fan sites.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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
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!
In short, when I flip to the "rock" station, that's what I want to hear. Other stations, same deal. Put something that isn't "rock" on there and you might attract a couple more viewers, but you've diluted your base to a point where any targeted advertisement has no effect, since its missing its mark. Same goes for any other channel. Let some idiots yammer on about nonsense for the morning commute and I'll just turn off the radio, if I wanted to listen to an idiot talk I'd switch to a talk radio station. The morning shows doesn't have any disc jockeys anyways. How can you be a DJ if you don't spin a disc?
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?
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.
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...
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.
And obviously Salon massively overrated the demand for those expensive writers.
Which tells us one thing and one thing only: If people are not willing to pay your price, you either drop it or go out of business.
Guess those writers were not so well-respected after all.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Oh quit your whining.
I hate the Clear Channel monopoly and media cartels as much as the next guy. But come on, this childish whining about payola is really just nothing.
If a person owns a radio station, and a business wants the station to play a certain advertisement, then that business PAYS for the air time. So stop thinking of the music that radio plays as entertainment, and start thinking of them as advertisements - to incent you, the listener, to buy an album. The whole ratings, and popularity game is just a bullshit scam dreamed up by the record companies to facilitate promotion anyway. (Awards shows as well.)
And if you look at the "product" that the radio station is offering to you: ads, interspaced with more ads - then perhaps it's time you get a grip and realize that it's not a worthwhile product, and stop consuming it. The only real "product" they offer is air time - and the record companies and advertisers (same thing) pay for that airtime. Basically, you, as a listener, are offering your ears for free, for nothing, to the radio station. You are their FREE demographic resource. A pair of ears to sit and listen to ads. You're getting nothing out of this deal.
If you want to listen to the music you want to listen to - the radio is the last fucking place you should be. (and the internet, the first!). It's called, "let the market decide". The invisible hand can't jack you off if you're too stupid to figure out you're being scammed.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
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.