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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".
Uh, the core of Salon *is* open source software. It's built on the HTML::Mason toolkit, and they've released various odds and sods back to the community.
We have no BBC or CBC here
I am an expat Brit living in Redmond, WA, and before I got broadband the lack of news here used to drive me CRAZY. I just didn't understand how people could be so incurious about the rest of the world, and how crap and banal is what little news there is which mentioned anything outside western Washington, or, Bog forbid, the USA. Hell, we don't even get any news from Vancouver or Portland most weeks!
Anyway, enough ranting: I just wanted to say that I preserved my sanity by going to the BBC radio web site where there is a round-the-clock stream of virtually all the BBC's radio output. For news in English, Radio 4 is probably best, though the World Service is also excellent, and also available in (currently) 43 languages.
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
It's only fitting. Most of the business models of companies like Salon read like something right out of Paranoia.
I used to work for a company that used Mason -- that was, in fact, the place where Mason had been created. Every single one of us hated it; it was inflexible and stupid, and the admins absolutely refused to ditch it in favor of anything else because they were in the position of people who knew how to keep things running but didn't know how to upgrade anything for fear of having it all come crashing down. When we offered to invest our own budget in a replacement CM system, they refused.
By the time word got around that we were getting ready to burn the place down rather than use Mason any longer, and by the time they decided it might be a nice idea to upgrade to something that wasn't reminiscent of the Stone Age, we all lost our jobs.
Mason, open-source as it may have been, was still crap.
they have expensive offices in Manhattan as well.
The problem is that they are having trouble getting out of their 10year lease on the offices. They weren't on a shoestring budget when they leased the spaces....and now do to poor planning and not realizing the bubble would crash, they can't get out of them.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
If you want an offline version but need the pretty pictures, they also have a PDF version that was added at the beginning of July, 2001.
You can get to either of them by clicking on Subscriber Services at the top of the main page, it's listed under "If you're new to Salon Premium." Actually, even simpler, both versions are linked from the "Premium Benefits" area at the top right of the main page and the section pages.
fencepost
just a little off
But if that wasn't enough - the entire second floor of the offices lays dormant - unused. They can't afford to pay enough people to occupy it.
Now tell me, before I go back to "Fox News.. or Nickelodeon", do you really think they needed all that? Or all the expensive parties they used to throw? Or could they have run the shop from, um.. anywhere else?
-Matthew
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
Almost $680,000/year in salary for just 4 company executives.
It seems hypocritical to beg for gift donations when you pay yourself 6-10x more than the average American's income.
What's not to love, especially for a Game Master? You get to act proper and fair as the GM, yet get to screw players over arbitrarily as The Computer who runs the world! Set up all sorts of plots only to have everyone kill each others' clones (you get six) and/or die at the hands of
- enemies,
- traitors,
- commies,
- mutant powers (yours or others),
- mutant powers that you can't control,
- poor experimental equipment,
- poor normal equipment,
- equipment sabotaged by your fellow players,
- death-trap missions,
- death-trap missions that your secret society explictly tells you must fail, and
- confusing and self-contradicting mission objectives!
In all seriousness, find a copy of the Paranoia manual! It's hilarious reading, and running it is the most fun ever if you have even a few of the right people.GET YOUR WEAPONS READY! --DR.LIGHT
The only difference between Salon and a print publication is the lack of a hardcopy edition.
And that's one HELL of a difference!
The vast majority (upwards of 80%) of a hardcopy newspaper's cost of production is in the printing and distribution. The money that goes into the giant presses, the paper, the inks, the distribution system, and horde of people on the payroll to operate and maintain all that hardware is astronomical.
Granted... most papers of a small circulation rent press time from larger papers. However, even renting the presses is very, VERY expensive.
And yet, many small print newspapers with a circulation of 50,000 make due with a lot less than $80 MILLION! In fact, I've never heard of one with a budget anywhere NEAR that much!
The
The German left-wing newspaper taz - die tageszeitung has been in financial trouble since I can remember it, and they've been using the "begging for subscriptions" tactics for several years. Until now, they've survived. They even got me as a subscriber some time - slight information overload with two newspapers ;-) but as long as it's a good deed... So there might be some hope for Salon if we take this as a reference.
-- Power corrupts, but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
I'm a conservative.
I enjoyed reading Salon for entertainment. Some of the articles (precious few) actually made me think, but most were just liberal rants about the current corrupt establishment that, quite frankly, were not very good reporting.
I don't see the value in paying for an opinion rag when you can get that from blogs.
Isn't that the simplest answer, regardless of your political persuasion?