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Salon Asks for Help
Henry V .009 writes "Salon.com is appealing to the community for help. They haven't been able to pay the rent since December. To date, they've lost about $80 million dollars. A cause of rejoicing for some. But their many readers are understandably sorry to see them in such desperate straits. Personally I hope they stick around, I think they are one of the best sources of independant journalism on the web--even if I happen to agree with less than 10% of what they have to say. I also think that it would be a shame for them to close now that they've finally created an advertising scheme that has a snowball's chance in hell of working on the web. I can actually recall some of the adverts I've seen on Salon--what other web site can you say that about? Salon says that if they get another 50,000 subscriptions (they currently have 50,000) they'll break even for the year." In the old role-playing game "Paranoia", there was a nice quote about what would happen when the player characters (who had never been outside of their enclosed city complex) made an attempt to swim in water over their heads: "delaying drowning".
The only reason I would ever consider subscribing is if salon was worth paying for. Right now, it simply isn't. Once in a while, they have a good story, but for the most part, they recycle the same tripe and offer very little new insight I couldn't get anywhere else.
But I was turned off by how the Editor-In-chief wrapped thesmelves as some crusaders for free speech, as if their death would be one less voice of reason. That's really not a valid reason for why anybody should be supporting them. They shouldn't kid themselves or their readers that they are a business, and out to make money like anybody else. Putting up the right wing conspiracy as a bogeymen to solicit donations is pretty disgusting for event them.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
It's just like liberals to blow their money and then rely on others to save their ass.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
Yes, the flock to academia where their "gibberish" turns into the ideas the conservatives were too close-minded to ever come up with...but are more than happy to capitalize on.
Apparently I need to be deported to Afghanistan. As far as you, I don't particularly care where you send you, but I think your ideas about freedom of thought and speech would be better suited to a country which preached less lofty ideals than this one.
These numbers are as dumb as you claim Talbot is. Clue 1: Employees have more overhead than just the money that goes to their pay check. Clue 2: Taxes.
If you are going to flame Talbot for being dumb, I think you should have the basic intelligence to come up with a real revised expense model.
- Sam (No, I will not miss Salon. I will miss Mandrake if they go, but not Salon)
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