Salon, Nearly No Money and Ultramercials

Adam9 writes "As Salon fights for survival, they have introduced a new advertising program that allows you to receive a free 12 hour pass by clicking through about 10 seconds of advertisements. Currently, the advertisements are from Mercedes-Benz. According to the article, they've lost about $79.7 million from their start in 1995. They also have about 45,000 subscribers right now." Jamie also pointed out this article from the WSJ, as well as the words from Salon themselves about it.

Comments

Debt, Writing and Survivability

[limekiller4]

It has been noted that Salon's financial woes (how the hell did they rack up 80M in debt?) stems from them hiring good writers. Excellent writers, in fact, top-of-the-line. Noam Chomsky comes to mind. But I have to point out that Alternet.org has writing that is, IMO, and just a smidge to the left of Salon.

So I have to ask, was the 80M in debt really necessary? Personally, I like Salon, and it is one of only three news sites in my bookmarks (along with the BBC and the aforementioned Alternet.org), and I am a subscriber to their premium service. But the idea that writers won't write unless they're paid is a lot like the RIAA saying people won't make songs if they can't !@#$ you in the butt for $16.99/cd. Just doesn't make any sense. But it sure seems to make sense to Salon:

"The greatest weakness of Internet users -- all of us -- is our failure to recognize the value of intellectual property. Of course we love free access to information -- the more the better. For years, those of us who are information junkies have been like pigs in mud. It has been fun, but those something-for- nothing days are over. There is a difference between the Internet mantra that "information loves to be free" and free information."

There is a large talent pool in the world, Salon. Use it. Big names are nice but big names are why you won't exist in a few years. The notion that talented writers only write if you lob a lot of money at them is just as false for the written word as it is for music.

I like this

[victim]

160 responses on slashdot and virtually none that actually talk about the ultracommercial concept.

I just went to salon and read a premium article. Here is my synopsis...

• ultracommercial has a problem on their systems, I got pages of MySQL errors the first time I tried it. Oops.
  
• The second time I tried I got to look at four spiffy pictures of a car with little click spots to get more info.
  
• After the forth picture I was sent to the article I had been reading with a complete version instead of just the front quarter.
  
• All in all, the ad took me less time than it takes me to walk outside and pick up my newspaper, plus my feet didn't get cold.
  

If a 10 second ad can keep salon and their reporters working I'm all for it. The US needs independent journalists. (Even if they sometimes say things you'd rather not hear. Personally I'm offended by something in Salon every single day. If I wasn't, I wouldn't bother to read it.)

Re:Too Liberal

[angst_ridden_hipster]

Far left? *Far*?

Good God, has the spectrum in the US moved that far to the right?

Salon may be left/center, but I don't recall seeing any articles demanding redistribution of land in the US or violently returning the means of production to the proletariat. Far left is Revolution, my friend, where you don't publish people like David Horowitz, you string them up in the city square.

Far left? Jesus F Christ...