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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".
I hope they can make it. Seriously, if you enjoy their articles, consider to get a subscription. I think it's worth it.
Fleur de Sel
I think it was worth it. Salon sometimes is a bit too liberal for my taste, but even if you don't agree with some of their politics, the enormous amount of content you get is certainly good. If you subscribe you get a free dead-tree subscription to Utne Reader (uck) and Mother Jones (yeah). Some interesting audio downloads, among other things. And no ads.
All in all, I enjoy reading Salon. If you do, consider plunking a few bucks for them.
NYTimes.com lets google run over their articles without subscribing. That way, you can read the entire article without subscribing by accessing it through google news.
Salon.com, on the other hand, lets you read the first couple of paragraphs and then you have to pay. I've never been interested enough by those first couple of paragraphs to pay anything. At least with the google news method, you could read a few articles without paying, and that way you would know whether you would be interested in paying for more.
They had Garrison Keillor and Camille Paglia. In its heyday, Salon was the best internet magazine around. I'll be sad to see it go; but writers like that command top pay. What they got now sucks and it's time to shut the thing down.
...when you can read all of the articles for free HERE days before they are posted at Salon?
He's referring to the interstitial ads that are promoted as a way to 'pay for a day'. You agree up front to look at one, and get a day-long cookie to view the site. I've quite happily agreed a couple times a week.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Of course, Salon is not public radio or television but they could be public internet news....
There is a certain amount of redundancy there, since the majority of news sites are free, just with annoying ads, and most are either politically neutral or liberal leaning. Being conservative myself, I never found any reason to read anything at Salon. This doesn't mean that there isn't anything of value, its just there are no shortages of liberal web sites for me to get that perspective.
On the other hand, I pay $45 a year for Rush Limbaugh 24/7 membership, so I can listen to show anytime 24/7, get his newsletter, and have full access to the premium content on his site. I just re-upped for two years.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
>Utne Reader (uck) and Mother Jones (yeah).
Or on The Nation or Harpers. They come in dead tree format so no more wireless laptops in the bathroom. There's a decent essay out there of how Salon spends its money (giant office spaces, high living, etc) that makes me not want to help them, especially when some very decent papers like MaJones or The Nation do what salon does a lot better.
What bothers me most is the assumption that there is no room for liberal media and people using salon as proof. Salon is just a badly run company ready to join its dot com brethrens at fuckedcompany. They simply failed to compete against more established and better left-leaning news outlets.
In the summer of 2001, I purchased a two-year subscription to Salon, knowing full well that the subscription term might be longer than the company's existence.
I knew that Salon had not made perfect business decisions, but they were pioneers in the Internet space, and there was a chance that they had learned from their errors. If a dynamic, independent source of journalism had an opportunity to succeed, then I wanted to do my part to help.
But now, it is clear that the management team lacks either the skill or the will to make a profitable enterprise out of Salon. They have had nearly two years to balance their budget, and during that team they received another substantial VC infusion. But they are out of money again, and there is no reason to believe at this point that they can manage the company out of this.
I won't be sending any more bailout money to Salon, because the overwhelming evidence is that it will go directly into the severance packages of unsuccessful managers.
If you think Andrew Sullivan is a "hyperconservative" it shows how skewed your view of the political landscape is. If you have ever read any of Mr. Sullivan's works you would know that he is socially liberal on many positions. Most "hyperconservatives" don't support abortion, gay marriage, and sex outside marriage.
One of the problems with political debate in this country is that we are all too quick to label and catagorize people instead of listening to their opinions. It is all too easy for a liberal to label someone like Andrew Sullivan as an "EVIL SUPER HYPERCONSERVATIVE" and then ignore his writings instead of reading them and giving them a chance to enlighten yourself or change your viewpoint. Likewise it is too easy for a conservative to label him as "EVIL CORRUPT HOMOSEXUAL" as do the same. The problem is that he does not fit into nice predefined catagories. This is one of the reasons I enjoy reading is articles so much. I don't agree with everything he says but I still gain understanding from his insitefulness. Much more than I would gain if I just read someone I agreed with 100%.
Just a tip. If you are only reading articles you agree with 100% you are doing something wrong. Challenge yourself sometime by reading people who you don't agree with and try understanding the world from their viewpoint. It will make you a much wiser and better person. If more people did that we could get away from childish namecalling and maybe have a reasonable debate sometime.
Brian Ellenberger
...where-as conservatives waste billions of dollars and line their pockets with the rest. What a shock.
Salon is dying, Wired sold out to big media, Suck died. Most of the early purely net based publishers are out of business. The lesson: pure online journalism or publications don't work - yet. And it's a failure of readers as well: they hardly support good sites with subscriptions, since there still is and always will be loads of "free" content around from big media. The best way to make money in media is to sell cds, dvds, tv shows, books and magazines. Well financed web based publishing is as real as the paperless office ... hardly at all.
it's too late. your $30 will go right into the keg and coke fund for the 'going out of business' party they'll no doubt throw.
they BLEW $80 million. you honestly think, even if they get another 50,000 subscribers tomorrow, that these morons can run a sucessful online company, and be on the air long enough to get your money's worth of reading back?
why would i throw $30 at these guys (no matter how good their content is) if they'll flush it down the drain like it's water?
Isn't it ironic that Matt Drudge is managing to build himself a little empire ... starting with nothing, while Salon can't .... starting with all that money.
When you get into the opinion selling business, you better make sure that there are enough people willing to buy what you think.
I view Salons demise as merely the rejection of elitist liberal journalism by the news and opinion consumers.
Ya, keep calling us dumb ignorant conservatives while trying to get us to buy your product.
I sympathize with your anger, but am not really sure what to make of it.
Lots of people here are comparing Salon with media like Mother Jones, The Nation, or The New Yorker, which are commentary and review media more so than news outlets.
I'm not sure those are valid comparisons. Those magazines publish weekly at most, and don't often have writers in the field worldwide covering current events.
A more apt comparision is the New York Times. It publishes everyday, and provides original coverage of events in widely different places across the world.
I don't really know, but what is the rent and operating expense of the New York Times? My guess is that it's comparable to Salon, if not more. Suddenly that 200k rent doesn't seem that unreasonable.
But I don't really know.
I am scared crapless of the idea of Salon going out of business, because the daily news in the U.S.--with the exception of a few sources (e.g., NPR, The New York Times)--is crap. Even The New York Times doesn't get it completely right for me (it is supposed to cater to NY, after all).
I don't understand why online journalism doesn't get anything right. Salon's got the right idea, it just needs to be more nonprofit in orientation.
I'm not sure what scares me more about the idea of Salon going out of business--the fact that it would be one less independent news source, or the fact that no one--even that independent news source--can do journalism right. If their coverage doesn't blow, they can't manage a business worth crap.
Why isn't there a nonprofit equivalent of Salon? Is there? Everything I've seen is way too radical and misinformed that way.
What's the penalty on breaking the lease? If they're paying $500k/month on a place, and breaking the least costs them 3 million, and they can get by with a place that costs 75k/month (keep key staff in the office, journalists can work from home), what not break it? The $475k/month savings would pay for the breaking of the lease in less than a year. I'm just picking numbers out of the air, but who knows...
I remember reading Salon 6 or 7 years ago. This was in the relative "infancy" of the WWW, when suck.com was still independent, and most print magazines were nowhere to be found. It was wonderful how much content they had, when there were few other "serious" journalism sites. They had an advice column written by Garrison Keillor, and another by Susie Bright, and they had a lot of interesting commentators. Good stuff for the time, and all online. I remember also being very impressed because they were the first online publisher I'd ever seen/heard referrred to in the "traditional" journalism outlets (quoted and referenced by The New Yorker and NPR and network TV news, among others, as well as print media).
I got pretty disenchanted about the time leading up to the Clinton impeachment, when they were spearheading a "conservative conspiracy" theory (they even broke some news stories, though I forgot what, exactly), when they basically seemed to become just one shrill party-line voice. I was glad they tried to smear Ken Starr, but concerned for their growing narrowness (hahahaha a neologism!). After that, despite attempts to increase their diversity by hiring conservatives to write for them, they lost had their focus. When I last went there and they shilled to get me to pay to read all the way to the end of their articles, I realized I didn't care anymore. Sometime in the last few years, they bought the Well in San Francisco (another early Internet experiment which didn't scale well past their telnet BBS beginning), which cemented their loss of relevance for me.
Now they've become a media outlet for which there's no audience, and though their passing is notable, it's not likely to be much mourned by anyone outside of a very small group. Salon is Dead. Long Live Salon.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
Why should I support Salon? If the poster is right
and they have figured out a half-promising ad model
then they should declare Chapter 11. Not Chapter 7,
just Chapter 11. Get out of onerous contracts like
that lease that suffocates them now and reorganize,
maybe even move to a cheaper city or burb. Why
should I pay for their lack of finacial advice?
These guys are raking it in. And they don't even really need to pay rent on their offices, just their servers.
They are making tens of thousands of dollars a month in subscription fees. More then enough to pay for servers and content. Don't bother donating to their swank offices and David Talbot's $400k salary.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Unsustainable business models are a dime a dozen these days.
Salon has spent $80M, and has 50,000 subscribers.
That's a customer acqusition cost of $1,600 per customer.
Say they get their doubled subscribership numbers; that drops the per customer acquisition cost down to $800 per.
Effectively, this means that they would have to get $67 a monthly issue in order to recoup costs, if acquisition was for a period of 1 year, which is normally how these things are measured.
Let's be incredibly generous, and call it 5 years of acquisition. Even so, we are still talking over $13/month/60 issues.
Does anyone really believe that this is going to happen?
These people obviously do not understand cost accounting or cash flow. They may or may not be good journalists, but they certainly are *not* good businessmen.
-- Terry
"I would be sorry to see it go. I think it's funny that people think Salon is "left". I mean, if it is left, what is the Boston Phoenix [bostonphoenix.com] or the Village Voice [villagevoice.com]?" Just as anti-American socialist as Salon, but in hardcopy. Although the Boston Phoenix doesn't seem to be quite as crooked as the Village Voice.
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