[ed. Reminds me of this piece of advice to young people: "But of course things did have to be this way; our Internet’s strange success contained within it the seeds of its destruction. Once people realize there’s money to be made in something, anything that was once good about it is not long for that world. This is probably where I should put a GIF of a character from a ’90s Nickelodeon show looking sad with the acronym LOL superimposed on it but I like to think I have conveyed that same sentiment using words."]
A Facebook page dedicated to celebrating the 20th anniversary of digital media pioneer Salon is functioning as a crowdsourced eulogy.
Dozens of Salon alumni have, over the past several months, posted their favorite stories from and memories of the once-beloved liberal news site described as a “left-coast, interactive version of The New Yorker,” a progressive powerhouse that over the years has covered politics with a refreshing aggressiveness, in a context that left plenty of room for provocative personal essays and award-winning literary criticism.
“We were inmates who took over the journalistic asylum,” David Talbot, who founded the site in 1995, wrote on the Facebook page. “And we let it rip — we helped create online journalism, making it up as we went along. And we let nobody — investors, advertisers, the jealous media establishment, mad bombers, etc — get in our way.”
They are mourning a publication they barely recognize today.
“Sadly, Salon doesn’t really exist anymore,” wrote Laura Miller, one of Salon’s founding editors who left the site for Slate last fall. “The name is still being used, but the real Salon is gone.”
Salon, which Talbot originally conceived of as a “smart tabloid,” began as a liberal online magazine and was quickly seen as an embodiment of the media’s future. For a while, particularly ahead of the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, it even looked as though it might be a success story. It lured famous writers and tech-company investors and went public in 1999. At the time, Salon was valued at $107 million.
“I think it’s very similar to what a Vox or a Buzzfeed seems today,” said Kerry Lauerman, who joined Salon in 2000 and would serve as the site’s editor in chief from 2010 to 2013. “There was, at first, a lot of money and excitement about Salon. There was no one else, really, in that space. ... It was kind of a brave new world, and Salon was at the forefront.”
Over the last several months, POLITICO has interviewed more than two dozen current and former Salon employees and reviewed years of Salon’s SEC filings. On Monday, after POLITICO had made several unsuccessful attempts to interview Salon CEO Cindy Jeffers, the company dropped a bombshell: Jeffers was leaving the company effective immediately in what was described as an “abrupt departure.”
While the details of Salon’s enormous management and business challenges dominate the internal discussion at the magazine, in liberal intellectual and media circles it is widely believed that the site has lost its way.
“I remember during the Bush years reading them relatively religiously,” Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, told POLITICO. “Especially over the last year, they seem to have completely jumped the shark in so many ways. They’ve become — and I think this is sad — they’ve definitely become like a joke, which is terrible for people who care about these progressive institutions.”
So, what happened? (...)
On social media, some have ridiculed the site for its questionable hot takes on the 2016 election and torqued-up lifestyle pieces that wouldn’t pass muster at any serious publication, like “Farewell, once-favorite organ: I am officially breaking up with my penis.” (...)
"We adopted a Huffington Post model, but we didn't have the resources to scale in a way that would've allowed for that kind of a model to actually work. We had 20 people, not 300,” one former staffer said. “I don't think Cindy ever realized that, and instead of modernizing within reason, while protecting the integrity of the brand — which was Salon's most valuable asset, by far — she decided to go full tilt for traffic, and it destroyed the brand."
A Facebook page dedicated to celebrating the 20th anniversary of digital media pioneer Salon is functioning as a crowdsourced eulogy.
Dozens of Salon alumni have, over the past several months, posted their favorite stories from and memories of the once-beloved liberal news site described as a “left-coast, interactive version of The New Yorker,” a progressive powerhouse that over the years has covered politics with a refreshing aggressiveness, in a context that left plenty of room for provocative personal essays and award-winning literary criticism.
“We were inmates who took over the journalistic asylum,” David Talbot, who founded the site in 1995, wrote on the Facebook page. “And we let it rip — we helped create online journalism, making it up as we went along. And we let nobody — investors, advertisers, the jealous media establishment, mad bombers, etc — get in our way.”
They are mourning a publication they barely recognize today.“Sadly, Salon doesn’t really exist anymore,” wrote Laura Miller, one of Salon’s founding editors who left the site for Slate last fall. “The name is still being used, but the real Salon is gone.”
Salon, which Talbot originally conceived of as a “smart tabloid,” began as a liberal online magazine and was quickly seen as an embodiment of the media’s future. For a while, particularly ahead of the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, it even looked as though it might be a success story. It lured famous writers and tech-company investors and went public in 1999. At the time, Salon was valued at $107 million.
“I think it’s very similar to what a Vox or a Buzzfeed seems today,” said Kerry Lauerman, who joined Salon in 2000 and would serve as the site’s editor in chief from 2010 to 2013. “There was, at first, a lot of money and excitement about Salon. There was no one else, really, in that space. ... It was kind of a brave new world, and Salon was at the forefront.”
Over the last several months, POLITICO has interviewed more than two dozen current and former Salon employees and reviewed years of Salon’s SEC filings. On Monday, after POLITICO had made several unsuccessful attempts to interview Salon CEO Cindy Jeffers, the company dropped a bombshell: Jeffers was leaving the company effective immediately in what was described as an “abrupt departure.”
While the details of Salon’s enormous management and business challenges dominate the internal discussion at the magazine, in liberal intellectual and media circles it is widely believed that the site has lost its way.
“I remember during the Bush years reading them relatively religiously,” Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, told POLITICO. “Especially over the last year, they seem to have completely jumped the shark in so many ways. They’ve become — and I think this is sad — they’ve definitely become like a joke, which is terrible for people who care about these progressive institutions.”
So, what happened? (...)
On social media, some have ridiculed the site for its questionable hot takes on the 2016 election and torqued-up lifestyle pieces that wouldn’t pass muster at any serious publication, like “Farewell, once-favorite organ: I am officially breaking up with my penis.” (...)
"We adopted a Huffington Post model, but we didn't have the resources to scale in a way that would've allowed for that kind of a model to actually work. We had 20 people, not 300,” one former staffer said. “I don't think Cindy ever realized that, and instead of modernizing within reason, while protecting the integrity of the brand — which was Salon's most valuable asset, by far — she decided to go full tilt for traffic, and it destroyed the brand."
by Kelsey Sutton and Peter Sterne, Politico | Read more:
Image: Salon
