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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
..and why should I care? I have the BBC !
I think worthless executives and overpaid contractors have milked this one dry, better to let Salon die than to keep dumping money into this greed-surrounded cesspool.
I can actually recall some of the adverts I've seen on Salon--what other web site can you say that about?
How about adds for MS Visual Studio on Slashdot? Especially on articles that say that MS bites the big one.
If I couldnt pay rent, I dont stay there. If I cant pay for food, I starve. If I dont pay... I DONT GET. If they want to create a pay site, fine. Elsewise they DIE.
ANyways, the only orginazation which can "die and keep on living" is the government. There's ono limits how much they can take away.
Salon committed suicide by alienating its core readership of liberals, when they brought on hyperconservatives like Sullivan and Horowitz. Note to editors: if you don't want to lose your subscribers, don't print essays that call them treasonous and anti-american.
You could see the writing on the wall when Salon hooked up with notorious blowhard Dave Winer. I bet they threw $200k down the Userland rathole, that would have been enough to pay the rent.
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.
Shyeah. Like I'm going to subscribe to a magazine that I suspect is going to expire before my subscription does.
It's hard to feel too sympathetic for Salon. With all of their moaning and groaning about overhead, you'd think they had to cut down dead trees, slice them up and cover them with ink, and mail them, or something. ("Oh, wait. You mean like every other magazine in the history of journalism?")
Dr. Darwin called -- he wants to cancel his subscription.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Poor Salon, the poor, "New Media" company that was supposed to eat 'old media' and own the world in 5 years. It's so sad to see a public corporation fail, oh, I'm sorry, "the dream die. " Frankly, I don't think people should continue to support them thru what is their death throes. They've pissed away EIGHTY MILLION dollars and they're still spending money on creature comforts (200k a _month_ for rent? Are their offices solid gold with cocaine on tap?), while cutting the actual _production_ staff (writers, et al) left and right? Fuck That. Free market economy means that it's fine for people to pull stupid shit like this, but it also means that they are free to fail horribly.
Considering more and more people in this country seem to be getting their "fair and balanced" news from Fox, this nation should be completely ignorant of everything that isn't waving an American flag within five years.. I enjoy Salon, I just subscribed to it. It's going to be sad when the only way to get information about your own country is to ready another country's newspapers.
My good looks paid for that pool, and my talent filled it with water.
Wow. Between the starving gold rock stars making a measlly 40K a year -- and a web site that pisses through 80 Million and can't find a way to keep the lights on, my heart just goes out to all these "poor" folks.
Maybe if I have any "compassion" left I will send a nickel to the evening news and a dime to the local newspaper -- they must be losing money to.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Salon offers nothing to the centrist or conservative person who does not live in San Francisco. I used to read it in 1999, when it was new, and the content was interesting (remember the Surreal Gourmet?) but it had gone steadily down hill since then. The linked article talks about their expensive office space in downtown SF. Please. If they were running on a shoestring, why get the expensive office space? Doubtless this will get down-moderated as flamebait.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
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.
If they double their subscription base, they will break even. Not make a profit. Break even.
I guess they might be factoring in the 33% discount on "gifts", so maybe they only need a 66% increase in their subscriber base. Even so, that doesn't sound promising to me.
There's also the definition of 'this'. The financial year in the US starts on April 1, right? So maybe they mean if in the last month of the financial year, they earn as much money in subscriptions as for the other 11 months combined, they'll break even. If so that bodes even worse for the next year...
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.
The Washington Post prints a regular column by George Will and I don't hear too many folks screaming about "alienation"!
In other news, CNN.com had a piece last week on the explosion of cyberbegging.
I have nothing against Salon, but why should we get all weepy when their business plan fails? More to the point, why is Slashdot giving them free advertising? Funny how my site wasn't slashdotted when I really needed some sales.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
If you look at the three things that anyone or anything can do if it is threatened, it can Move, Adapt, or Die. Salon is based in San Franscisco, California. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?!? That's one of the highest rent places in North America! There's cheaper rent within 100 miles of where they're currently based! Obviously no one considered the "move" possibility.
As for business models changing, advertising methods changing, they don't sound like they've adapted too well either. If you've been past due since December, you should have seen the writing on the wall in at least October or November. Some companies don't even have central offices anymore, they are all working from home or have one small office, and they use their colocation site for their main office servers. That would be a way to not be screwed. They haven't exactly adapted fully, either.
What's this leave us with? Die. Salon will probably die. I'd be inclined to think of them as simply the latest fallen dotcom, that took a little longer to fold than the others. I don't begrudge them for their efforts, but things were not right in order for Salon to get this far in the hole in the first place.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Most liberals I know (including myself) find it very valuable to learn what the other side is thinking. In fact, the further to the left you go, the more respect you are likely to find for intelligent debate. As Jack Ryan said in "Red October, "It is wise to know the ways of one's enemy." Accusing us of traitorous and anti-american behavior, in fact, probably causes MORE liberals to read. Having said that, throwing a $200k salary at anybody is a bad idea when you can't pay the rent.
Even if you don't agree with all of the views expressed there, you have to agree that Salon, like Slashdot, is one of the few truly independent news sources out there. Unfortunately, not everything on the internet can be entirely free. It costs money for Talbot and his crew to write; it is only fair that we pay to read. I'm a Premium Member, and just purchased a "Make A Difference" subscription so someone else can experience the wonder of independent media. In a world where the major news sources resort to fear-mongering to sell themselves, Salon and those similar to it are a last refuge of sanity. You have to remember, the sole purpose of television news is to keep you watching between commercials. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox aren't interested in presenting the truth, only something entertaining, or scary enough to keep you from changing the channel. Salon and Slasdot are different; the two communities should support each other. Do your part to keep Salon alive, buy a subscription, it's only $30, or $18.50 with ads. In the long run, that amount is negligible, even for the pimply faced teens. This probably sounds like an NPR fund drive, and it kind of is, but this vital source of information and commentary is going to die unless we do something about it. If one tenth of the ~600,000 registered Slashdot users help support Salon, we will double the number of Premium subscribers. This is doable, even if stopping the war, or overturning the DMCA isn't.
Even if you only occasionally enjoy reading a Salon article or disagree with the politics of some (or all) of its writers, I urge you to strongly consider a $30 yearly subscription. Slashdot readers are surely aware that the big press in America is beholden to special interests. We have no BBC or CBC here, just mediocre and sensationalist networks run by the likes of AOL and Rupert Murdoch.
Just as free speech is meaningless to the American poor, so too is free press when owned and controlled by billionaires. I have found Salon to be a great source for thoughtful and challenging articles. Supporting it is supporting democracy.
sm
I'm sure there will be a lot of comments like: "this is just capitalism at work, survival of the fittest, etc."
If Salon goes under, then it's an example of how capitalism can FAIL.
In fact there are lots of comments that state that capitalism is working. Why? Because it's true. Salon pissed through a huge amount of money and failed to attract enough subscribers to survive. Salon has failed, capitalism has suceeded.
ich muß mehr Kuhglocke haben
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.
You know what.. I'm sick of hearing about the "liberal mainstreeam media outlets" that all conservatives keep ranting on about.
I can name quite a few conservative outlets (and these aren't disputable by EVEN conservatives.) You got the "fair and balanced" Fox News, WABC with Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, the WSJ opinion pages (which are the most partisan op-ed pages in history, and they revel in this fact), newsmax, the drudge report, the new york post, the National Review, the Economist, etc etc...
Now what "LIBERAL" sources are there? CNN? You mean the CNN with Robert Novak and Carl Tucker (two prominent conservatives, one being the FOUNDING editor of The National Review.)
ABC? You mean a station that broadcasts about 2 hours of news an evening? MSNBC which just hired Pat Buchanan? The New York Times which have more than their fair share of conserataives gracing their op-ed pages? The New Republic? Which is more hawkish than any democrat out there on issues like Israel?
No, face it. There are very very very very very very very few liberal sources of the like of the National Review and Newsmax... you know the type.. the ones that have NO liberal/democrat columnists and such bitter angry non-substantive rants against the dems.... Salon actually is the only I can think of, and EVEN they have columnists like Horowitz.
So let's stop this "The world is run by liberal media" bullshit... it makes me sick.
It seems to me that if Salon goes under because they spent more than they earned, it'll be Salon that fails. That's capitalism at work.
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
Over the last few years, I have consistently been impressed with the quality of journalism found in Salon's pages. To all those of you that have enjoyed some of salon's work over the years, please consider subscribing.
Try this: Go to the Slashdot search page and search for "Salon". I get over a hundred results in the last year alone. And these are not just links to AP newswire stories hosted at Salon, these are original content, bankrolled by them. For all you out there bitching about "how can a website spend 80 million dollars?" that's how. They spend that much by funding the production of original, quality content.
It's also hilarious to see some of you bitching about how Salon is going out of business by alienating their readership by publishing perspectives that are too liberal or too conservative. While having a liberal slant in general, Salon publishes perspectives that challenge their readers. I disagree with most of what Andrew Sullivan writes, but I appreciate the diversity of perspectives that his writing provides. If I wanted a news medium that always told me what it thought I wanted to hear, I'd just tune into the network news every night.
Do you want to see this source of independant journalism go out forever? If they don't a big jump in subscriptions, it will. I know lots of you out there are unemployed, but lots of you aren't. the $20 or $30 salon subscription is nothing to you highly paid software engineers.
I'm not working right now (I'm a student), so money is tight, but I have subscribed and after I write this, I am going to go over and try to extend my subscription. And yes, I have done my best to encourage friends and relatives that read occasionally to subscribe as well (with three successes).
They are a quality publication that you have all been sporadically enjoying for many years and now they need your help. Please subscribe.
>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.
I also subscribe to slashdot, ars technica, and gamespot. I am one of the few who actually support good content. Please if you have put off subscribing - to any site - do so now. Show that you want good content. No flames about slashdots quality either - you know as well as I do you check this site multiple times a day!
For all you out there bitching about "how can a website spend 80 million dollars?" that's how. They spend that much by funding the production of original, quality content.
OK, let's look at this... Big picture stuff... Server co-location, $1000/month, tops. The rest should go to content production. For $80 million, you could pay 80 writers $100,000 each for 10 years. Now, Salon hasn't been around for nearly 10 years, and they don't have 80 writers (more like 10?). And $100K/year is a nice salary, *especially* for a journalist. So, I'm still asking, where the fuck did their money go to?
Sure, there's loads of sites with advers which stick in my mind. Take slasdot, for instance, it has loads of great adverts. Like the one for that company that sells stuff that geeks would think are cool, green laser pointers and whatnot; can't quite remember their name or URL, it's just on the tip of my tongue. And there's the one I'm looking at right now, advertising some sort of hand-held three-in one communications device. And so on. So there.
Let's be clear: some of the money they've raised over the year is simply gone, exchanged for stockholder equity: that's investment capital, not lost money. They spent it, the stockholders have stock, the money isn't owed to anyone.
A very small amount of money in relative terms is actually owed, under a few million I believe, but their operating costs exceed their income and they don't have any sources of stock -> money exchanges.
It's still ridiculous, of course, to have spent that much, but it's just pissed away not owed.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
I couldn't have said it better myself. I'd mod you up if I had any moderator points. The mainstream media has become wickedly conservative in the last few years. Obviously Salon has a liberal bias.. but the posts on here act as if it was the liberal equivalent of Rush Limbaugh! (That role goes to Michael Moore, which Salon in fact has had several critical articles about Moore). I encourage people to get some larger perspective on news sources before making judgements about degrees of bias.
AccountKiller
Salon's biggest difficulty is the mediocre quality of its content. Salon tries to be an educated, urban, lefty magazine, but it doesn't quite make it. There are other magazines in the same space: The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Mother Jones, Harper's, and so on. Can anyone seriously pretend that Salon's content is the same quality as, say, the Atlantic Monthly? When I saw that Salon wanted ~$30 to subscribe, I thought to myself: "I don't want to read their articles that badly." And I like leftist opinion journals.
Doing some simple math, there's no way this makes sense.
80 million owed divided by 50,000 new subscribers = $1600 per subscriber which would be needed to make them break even. That doesn't make any sense
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
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
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 about what's covered, how long it's covered, and what words are used to cover it.
The ABC/CBS/NBC newscasts, from which most Americans get their tiny bit of news, is very left-of-center in its coverage. Extremely anti-Israel pro-Palistinean, pro Democrat. They use Democratic talking points like scripts. Good grief - look at Dan Rather!
Sixty Minutes, another prime source of news/analysis for Americans is as liberal as they come.
CNN and MSNBC in general have a liberal tenor, but I find CNN's coverage to be excellent and I'm smart enough to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Fox News is conservative, no doubt, but it is the only 24 hour news network in the US that leans right.
Most journos are liberals. (The Washington Post staff voted 80% for Al Gore. Similar results in the NY Times, Boston Globe, etc..) The result is conservatives have mustered their forces and they're winning! But the libs have no one to blame but themselves. For so long they had a stranglehold on the media. They created a huge, angry, pent-up demand for Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Fox News, etc..
I don't have the time or the patience to get into a tit-for-tat on the merits. There are plenty of liberal voices out there. There are more and more conservative voices. Many of both stripes are jerks or idiots. (Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh)
Best of all, now we ALL have a choice. (What, don't you have a sub to _Mother Jones_?)
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
Do you want to see this source of independant journalism go out forever? If they don't a big jump in subscriptions, it will.
Salon is one source of independant journalism, not the only source. Their business model was terrible, demonstrated by the fact that they need to double the number of subscribers simply to break even. The best writers will be picked up by other sites and publications, while the mediocre ones will need to find other work. Don't prolong Salon's life, let it die quickly and with some dignity.
ich muß mehr Kuhglocke haben
Alot of ideological publications cannot make it on their own. "The Nation" has never made money. "National Review" (on the right) is supported by WFB's family wealth. NPR takes government subsidies and still tirelessly presses is subscribers for more money!
There are only two kinds of media that can independently survive in America:
1. Mass-market outlets that take a "least common denominator" approach to content, trying to appeal to a wide array of people (Fox, Rush Limbaugh, Newsweek, US News, etc).
2. Outlets which have very high-quality content (Harper's, Granta, etc), for which a few people will pay a significant amount of money.
Salon is neither of these. To survive, it will require a subsidy, just like "National Review" and "The Nation."
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.
I think the hiring of all the conservative voices on FOX,MSNBC,CNN, etc. is in response to marketplace demand,as it should. Remember MSNBC's hiring of Donahue was heralded as the liberal answer to the conservative commentators? Well Donahue's ratings are in the toilet, and his days are numbered. There have been many attempts at a radio talk show response to Limbaugh but they all consistently fail. Could it be due to the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy(tm) Hillary spoke of, or could it be that many leftist ideas fail in the marketplace in forums where they can be directly challenged? TV and radio need to sell advertising dollars and are purely ratings driven. If a TV or radio broadcaster had a left-wing commentator who consistently scores high ratings do you seriously think they would get rid them for ideological reasons, even though they bring in the advertising bucks? Of course not- they're in business to make money. But the liberal viewpoint in these media outlets fails time after time. Is it because the liberal viewpoint is being silenced or because the liberal ideas aren't that great to begin with? (the answer to that probably depends on your own political beliefs.) As far as bias in the print media (L.A. Times, Washington Times,etc.) it does exist but now that it is being exposed it doesn't occur as blantantly. Back in the day, whenever describing a republican such as Dick Armey, Tom Delay, etc. it would be prefaced with "right-wing","extreme-right wing",or "ultra-conservative". Do you recall the last time a democrat such as Ted Kennedy or Maxine Waters was referred to as "extreme-left wing" or "ultra-liberal" in mainstream print? The phrases "big oil" and "big tabacco" are frequently used. Do you recall ever seeing the phrases "big union" or "big environmental lobby"? Pro-gun control people are referred to as "activists". Anti-gun control people are referred to as "lobbyists".
It's only fitting. Most of the business models of companies like Salon read like something right out of Paranoia.
I'll tell you that's simply not the case because of all the things that do depend on physical location. The biggest example is taxes. I'm the co-founder of a small company that runs an online RPG, Meridian 59. We're a "virtual" company with people that live in both California (specifically the Bay Area) and Connecticut. Because of this arrangement, I get to do over twice the amount of paperwork for taxes. Since we pay people wages, we have to register in both states for various payroll tax reporting. On top of this, since we have workers in both states, we're considered to be "doing business" in both states, so we're subject to the Sales and Use taxes for each state. When we sold some CDs containing the installation of our game, we had to report total sales and break down the sales that happened in each state in order to pay the proper taxes on them. As CFO, this took a non-trivial amount of my time to collect and organize this information, and to fill out the appropriate form. Finally, there's no substitute for face-to-face contact. Building a small business is about building relationships with people; there's only so much you can do over Trillian or even a phone call. As for the SF Bay Area, it's not so simple. Yes, it's stupid expensive to live out here. But, when you consider that there are two major cities, one of which is known to be one of the few cultural centers in the US, you realize what you are paying for. Also, there's a strong concentration of truly clueful technical people out here, especially ones that have the required skills for game development. Two of the people that are working with us (on the cheap, I might add) I met around here due to our shared interests. Some insight on the matter,
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
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?
From my POV (I am in the UK) all american news media is right wing.
From my point of view, all UKers fall somewhere between socialist and communist. Then again, sweeping generalizations like mine and yours are not very helpful.
Fox news is so right wing it is like a parody.
Oh, it can get much worse than the Fox news channel. Take, for example, WorldNet Daily or Newsmax.com, which make a point of headlining stories about Christian persecution and how Darwinism is being refuted. Hell, it can even get worse than that. Perhaps check out the Hal Turner Show.
For that reason I am always amazed to see some people claim CNN is "liberal".
CNN is pretty fair, though I've never heard them criticize a government program. Dan Rather is a much better example of Leftist bias in American media.
Can you US guys get Euronews (satellite news tv channel)? I wonder what you make of it in comparison to your home grown news channels.
Let me guess: "America is the source of all the world's problems. The Government is the solution to all the world's problems. Individality must be suppressed. The Government is the source of morality. Capitalism is evil. There is nothing wrong with communism; the problems have only been in its implementations." Did I get it right?
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I've said it before and I'll say it again : Reading Salon liberal journalism is like getting punched in the face with your hands tied behind your back.
I like reading opinions I disagree with but I hate it when there is no real method to rebut. Disagree with a story? Tough luck, no way to contact the author and no forum tied directly to the story.
I could go further and say the liberals running Salon run a budget about as well as the liberals in politics handle budgets. No wonder they are pleading for handouts. Small wonder they aren't blaming the successful websites for their demise and demanding a forced redistribution of the popularity.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Move!
They are web-based.
Sigs are dangerous coy things
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.
on the tangent of the so-called "liberal" media, this essay is a good (published beyond this homepage of the author) critique of his common run-ins of the critiques of Chomsky and Herman's critique of the mainstream media with their "Propaganda Model." http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/herman review.htm. check it out... you'll learn about the propaganda model, and if you don't agree with it - you might at least (hopefully) come up with more creative critiques than what jensen debunks.
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.
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.
MEMO:
TO: David Talbot
FROM: John Murdoch, consultant
RE: Salon Business Plan
Executive summary: It's the math, stupid.
Dear Dave:
I have read of your impending demise on SlashDot, including links to an article on the Globe and Mail site suggesting that you are paying $200,000 per month in rent for space in San Francisco and a smaller--but similarly mind-blowing--amount on space in New York. I also read your plea to readers, saying that if each of your 53,000 subscribers just signed up one additional subscriber, why Salon would be able to break even. America would continue to have a vocally left-wing e-rag; the earth would continue to revolve.
The business problem
It's the math, stupid. If your assertion in the editorial plea is correct (that you need an additional 50,000 subscriptions to break even) then your annual budget is in the neighborhood of $3,000,000. But your annual rent ($200,000/month) runs to $2,400,000 a year--leaving $600,000 for staff and editorial content.
Simply put, you have zero reason to have any office space in San Francisco or New York. You're running a virtual magazine, remember? That's a synonym for website. If Rob Malda and Jeff Bates can run SlashDot from Holland, Michigan, what makes you think you need to be paying $100 per square foot? You need a decent connection to your hosting sites, and a place to keep the handful of full-time employees left on the payroll.
How you could re-organize
File for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11. That protects you from your creditors while you develop a plan for re-organization to submit to a bankruptcy court judge. Yeah--your main money men will take it in the shorts: John Warnock and the Silicon Valley liberals who fronted the $81,000,000 you have pissed away will have to write off their investments. But the big thing Chapter 11 will do is get you out of those, um, burdensome (read: IN-blinking-SANE) leases. No bankruptcy judge in the country will allow you to pay for top-dollar real estate for the purpose of hosting a web site--the leases will be broken. Then you can move on to the rest of your re-organization.
Re-organization:
You have 53,000 subscribers--some pay $18.50 per year, but most pay $30 per year to avoid the ads. Let's assume an average subscription of $24, and (round numbers) gross revenue of $1,270,000. Let's figure on 6 full-time equivalent employees at a fully-loaded cost of $60,000 apiece (including salary, taxes, benefits, etc.): that's $360,000 in payroll. 1000 square feet of "office/flex" space in any moderate industrial park will run you approximately $8 per square foot per year--that's $8,000 in rent. Toss in a thousand a month for heat/light/power/telephone, and another thousand for office expenses, furnishings, furniture, and equipment--soup to nuts, your total "SG&A" expenses run to $392,000. Leaving you $880,000 per year for writers and hosting fees. Top-notch editorial doesn't come for free--but almost Nine Hundred Grand buys you a lot of articles at a thousand bucks a pop.
But don't let that stop you from begging...
Hey--public broadcasting stations have been threatening their imminent demise for decades. So, for that matter, have dozens of television evangelists. If you're just scamming your subscribers for a bit more cash--hey, it helps the bottom line. Even the politically-correct have to pay the rent....
But let's be clear about one thing
Your financial problems are problems of your own making. Paying millions of dollars for glam real estate was "making a statement." It sure was--"we are D-U-M-B!" You have the ability to solve your problems--use the bankruptcy provisions the law allows you. Doing so will keep you in business, and allow you to continue to have a voice in American public discourse. If you fail to do so, your voice will be silenced by your own management failure--not some secret cabal of "voices in the present administration" who might want to silence you.
Just look at enron.com.
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've been a member of Salon for quite a while and did what I could to support them. 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 or the Village Voice?
I also would be sorry, and more pertinently to Slashdot, because I think their design for semi-automated publishing was kind of neat, and it is one of the last examples of a house doing their own development work I know of. That is a dwindling group.
While I cannot address the questions of rent for their offices -- which if true, I agree seem excessive -- I think "the end of the dot-com bubble" means more than the crashing of way-out business models, excessive spending, and such. I mean, when MoTown was starting up, they were excessive in parties, liquor, etc
To me, these companies are failing as much because of deflation in the information technology industry as anything else. That deflation is caused:
The last effect is a subtle, I think. Since good news coverage and similar entertainment is now available on the Internet and cheaply, any premium or brick-and-mortar company has to deal with not so much with e-business competition but with the expectation that new can be had for much less. Why subscribe to the New York Times paper when most of what's good about it is available online for zip?
I think whatever happens to Salon is part of a trend, because what we earn for doing information technology is diminishing and will continue to diminish.
Jan Theodore Galkowski, (Oo) http://www.smalltalkidiom.net/ MySQL,PHP,ETL,SQL,MinGW C, and plucking the Web
You seem to be assuming that all 50,000 subscribers are doing so on a monthly basis. Most of those subscribers probably bought an annual subscription which is $30 or $2.50/month. That comes to only $125,000 a month. When you consider that they have new content every day, usually from some pretty big names, it's obvious why they are having trouble making a profit.
"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.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
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
In the grand scheme of things, Salon is just another online newsjournally type site, if they go away, we are not losing anything unique. The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Exchange on the otherhand, has been around since the 80's...I remember having the The WELL on my dial list as I went through my nightly BBS romp.
Unfortunately, through various twists and turns, The WELL ended up under Salon's ownership. If Salon goes under, does this mean The WELL will also? That would be horrible and ironic end for something as insignificant as Salon to take down a piece of internet history with it...in 10 years (assuming Salon shuts down, which it likely will) few people will remember or miss Salon...but 20 years down the road, The WELL is still remembered for it's place in the early internet, and I know there are plenty of people who will miss it.
Otoh, maybe more people like Salon than I realize; but somehow I doubt it is the same as The WELL.
I hope if Salon goes under, that The WELL will somehow be preserved. As for Salon.com, I could care less.
yeah, so much is this cheesy "these people are such dummies" or simpler still, use liberal as synonym for stupid. It's not to much that I disagree with him as I tune out to empty rhetoric. The conservative writers I take seriously -- and enjoy reading -- are the ones who write well and persuasively.
:)
The NYT was for a while running Sullivan prominently, even a Sunday Magazine cover if i recall. I don't know whether they were making the same mistake as Salon, thinking that bring Sullivan on innoculates against charges of liberal bias. I haven't noticed him much lately. But really guys, there are better choices! I'm glad they keep Safire, even if I detest him 2/3 of the time.
For the record, I did subscribe to Salon.
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.
My full-size 4x4 pickup truck only gets 18mpg out if its 325 cubic-inch V8, and the gas cost at $2.00/gallon is killing me. According to Arianna Huffington, a Salon writer, I don't need this vehicle, nevermind the fact that I had the low range transfer case engaged but 24 hours ago climbing a muddy 30 degree incline. People simply don't need such things in the 21st century, such vehicles are purely status symbols. (Not to mention that they support terrorism....for every 10 rounds of 7.62mm ammo her 24mpg Volvo XC-90 buys the terrorists, my truck buys them 15!)
Well, given that Arianna believes that my truck is unnecessary, and I can certainly affirm that Salon is less necessary than my truck, I'm going to have to decline the invitation to subscribe during these tough times.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
I have little sympathy ... I mean, come on, it doesn't take $80M to run a server farm and pay a few journos...
First of all, that $80M is the total they lost, ever. Of course it's a lot of money, but others did way WAY worse. Even amazon, who we regard as somewhat successful, was losing between 25%-125% of that amount per quarter until just 6 months ago*. And, as many others have pointed out, one of the reasons that they still have ongoing losses is the digs in downtown SF, with a lease negotiated in the halcyon days of the late 90s when it seemed like a good idea.
What I don't understand is how everyone refuses to be understanding of the situation. We all know, times were good, now times are bad; why dance on Salon's grave before the body's even cold? Even if you disagree with its political slant, Salon has had tons of insightful articles by a wide array of interesting columnists, and they're flogging a business model we'd all love to see succeed: the pureplay online publication. Salon's a great thing caught in a bad place -- be careful wishing for them to fail spectacularly, because that implies lots of other imminent failures you may not like so much.
That said, if the primary reason they're in such a tight spot is that horrible lease, then this is exactly the kind of situation that bankruptcy protection was designed for. I for one would LOVE to see Salon file for bankruptcy and reorganize, not because it would be a sign of failure, but precisely the opposite. This is a financial committment that could very realistically stop them from operating. They shouldn't be in that expensive location any more, and the landlord will most likely not ever see the money anyway. So why sink the ship along the way?
THAT said, the fact that they're still floundering with no plan is the reason I haven't subscribed yet. Times are tight; I could certainly afford $20 a year, but I'd rather not spend $20 for 1 month or possibly 2. If 50,000 of us all signed up at once, they may have enough revenue to continue indefinitely, but no one signup is going to save them. The information I'd like to see from a "fellow prisoner" is what Salon's going to do to make sure they stick around a while - I think bankruptcy could be key.
Notes:
* According to EDGAR online via yahoo financial
Publishing? Oh yea, linking to news sources, adding a short un-edited blurb, and providing a forum is *really* the future of publishing. :P
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
Really, you can't honestly compare Amazon and Salon.
Take away Amazon's web site, and what do you have? A *huge* company with buildings, supply chains, delivery systems, etc... If they had a physical shop you could walk into, you wouldn't think that they're anything different than any new mega-chain spending money putting up shops and building market share.
The only thing with Amazon is that they are a web-based only catalogue ordering company. I know that there are alot of other companies in the US that are catalogue-only. That's what you should be comparing them to.
Salon is a web magazine site. No big inventory, no supply and distribution chains. All you need is a webserver, a co-lo, an editorial team, and some freelance writers. There is nothing forcing them to spend alot of money on fancy offices, marketing executives and coke habits. Sure, they wouldn't be as big, but they would probably stil be around.
"The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
Well, $350/month is a really greatprice , but you to pay for *air*? You know, someone's ripping you off, everyone else doesn't have to pay for air...
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.
Take away Amazon's web site, and what do you have?
Walmart.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.