Press and media
View from briefing·center
in brief
Salon, internet news pioneer, says goodbye after 31 years
Salon.com announced its demise on Thursday, and I’d like to give them the moment they deserve.
David Talbot launched Salon in November 1995 into a very different online world. There were perhaps 100,000 websites worldwide at the end of that year.
We had started our own news company that year — weekly print and daily fax — and I was learning HTML and anything else I thought we’d need to launch our own website, which debuted in April 1996. We didn’t offer email — at that point, not enough of our subscribers used it.
If you weren’t there, you missed when the internet was still fun, still held wonders, and was not a fully commercialized surveillance machine.
And reading Salon was fun. As legacy print publications started to struggle with the new economics of the news business, Salon felt like the future: a robust fully online news presence.
I was a reader, and for a long time, a subscriber, particularly during its tween and teen years. Two of my favorites during that stretch were King Kaufman writing about sports, and Thomas Bartlett introducing us to amazing new music.
The list of writers who gained prominence for their work there and elsewhere is long. Looking at past articles Thursday, I came upon an item announcing a new hire, someone named Steve Kornacki. I hear he has a gig at NBC News now …
After a time, Kaufman and Bartlett were gone, and eventually Salon moved on without me. That’s not a criticism: Online publishing has been, from the day the Mosaic browser was released in 1993, a treacherous business, and no news organization has survived without a course correction or two. Not all your readers stay on board when you tack.
From its start until Thursday, Salon piled up journalism awards, a testament to its contribution to the public discussion. Happily, its content remains available, at least for now. And happily, the Internet Archive, that online treasure, has a substantial collection of Salon content.
I’ve closed the doors on a news company before, a fledgling start-up that ran out of financial runway. The failure was painful, and a friend, in commiseration, said, “Well, you did everything you could.”
That was true, but I wasn’t sure whether that made me feel better or worse.
I don’t know what the Salon staff knew or didn’t know before Thursday’s announcement. I’m guessing any number of them will face today with hangovers. Right up until the announcement, I’m sure they did their best, and no, I’m not sure if that makes them feel better or worse.
I hope they at least feel proud.
Salon: Goodbye from Salon
The New York Times: Salon, a Pioneer of Digital Journalism, Shuts Down
HuffPost: Trailblazing Digital News Site Salon Shuts Down After 31 Years
The Associated Press: Online magazine Salon, an early staple of internet discourse, announces it will shut down
deadline.com Online Media Pioneer Salon To Shutter: ‘Our Publishing Model Is No Longer Sustainable’