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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
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.