Salon, Nearly No Money and Ultramercials 441
Adam9 writes "As Salon fights for survival, they have introduced a new advertising program that allows you to receive a free 12 hour pass by clicking through about 10 seconds of advertisements. Currently, the advertisements are from Mercedes-Benz. According to the article, they've lost about $79.7 million from their start in 1995. They also have about 45,000 subscribers right now." Jamie also pointed out this article from the WSJ, as well as the words from Salon themselves about it.
Anyone know (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Anyone know (Score:5, Funny)
slyguy^: How many paying subscribers are there to Slashdot?
Hemos: 12. After we split it all up, I got a #4 combo at Taco Bell.
Re:Anyone know (Score:2)
Re:Anyone know (Score:5, Interesting)
What I have seen is this: No ads, combined with the knowledge that Slashdot still got paid anyway (thereby staying open), every time I hit their server. I don't really care very much if any new features ever get added or not.
That's all there is to it, and it's really that simple. I hate ads (and I fast-forward through them on my Tivo), and if I just filter, then someday Slashdot will cease to be (*). Without money, the wires that carry electricity and data would stop working, and then it would be over.
That would matter to be, because I have fun here. I learn things, I read funny things that make me laugh, I troll, I egotistically shout nonsense just to hear my own voice, I watch others do the same, and we all waste time together. That's all I ask for, so it's ok if that's all I get.
(*) How do I -- just one little guy using up half a cent credit with every page load -- possibly make that much difference? I don't know. If there are lots of people like me, then we'll add up to something. If there aren't many of us, then I hope someday maybe there will be. The basic principle is: if you want to change the world, you must first change yourself. Conduct yourself in the manner that you hope others conduct themselves. This is my strategy for keeping my playground open.
Most advertisers won't allow this... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Most advertisers won't allow this... (Score:5, Interesting)
The advert i saw the other day from mercedes benz was clearly designed to be exactly that sort of click through. It had 4 pages of very flash oriented adverts for some new car.
I must admit it was quite effective, and if i had the money to buy a mercedes then the ad might have effected me.
If it were better targetted and perhaps extolled the benifits of red bull and coding sessions then i might have gone for it.
I will NEVER buy a Mercedes again. (Score:4, Informative)
Everybody have a look at http://www.mercedesproblems.com/ [mercedesproblems.com] before you even think of buying one of these clunkers.
I'm giving Volvo a try now.
Re:Most advertisers won't allow this... (Score:5, Interesting)
CPM (cost per thousand) is the defacto standard.
Furthurmore, most ads dont have anything to offer beyond the clickthru. Internet advertising is primarily a branding medium
Actually _seeing_ the ad for longer than 2 seconds is. (Salon isnt forcing you to click, they're forcing you to watch
I know these things because I write the ad delivery server for a company that has about 10% online penetration (one in ten americans online have 'hit' my ad server at some point.)
Re:Most advertisers won't allow this... (Score:5, Funny)
In those 1 in 10 Americans that have 'hit' your ad server, I'm sure that 9 of 10 would like to 'hit' something else.
Re:Most advertisers won't allow this... (Score:2)
Re:Most advertisers won't allow this... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have the solution! (Score:3, Funny)
Micropayments (Score:4, Interesting)
I realize there are problems with accepting micropayments via credit card, but certainly something like PayPal could be used.
Re:Micropayments (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Micropayments (Score:4, Interesting)
There are toll roads that operate this way.
Re:Micropayments (Score:2, Funny)
"When I was your age we had to carry our packets with our bare hands to the router...It was 5 miles, in the snow, uphill!*cough*"
one shot usage? (Score:2)
I was like that for a while (Score:2)
Re:Micropayments (Score:2, Informative)
A working micropayment system would solve a lot of problems in a lot of industries.
Re:Lottery Micropayments (Score:5, Funny)
/** Decide if payment is required.
* @author Jim - IT Development
*/
public boolean isPayment {
return true;
}
Is this where things are going? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is this where things are going? (Score:2)
Their site plainly appeals to more educated and probably more wealthy individuals and i am of the opinion that this advertising method will not work for many other sites.
Too bad, but seemingly unavoidable (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ummm dude...have you (Score:2)
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The "National Socialist" name was propagandistic, dumbass. The Nazis needed all the political leverage they could get in the twenties. Hitler figured people would be dumb enough to fall for this, and he was right. In fact people still fall for it even today.
It's like the "Recording Industry Artists of America". Don't believe everything you read.
How did they lose $80 million? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now they have a solid base of advertisers and 45,000 paying subscribers, which is really good for an online magazine. The WSJ article says they are looking at a strategy of reducing costs. Sounds like a plan to me. Is it really conceivable that they can't find a way to keep costs within expected revenues?
what you're missing (Score:3, Informative)
it took USA Today 5 YEARS to become profitable, and it was still only because they were bought out by a huge megamedia company.
Re:what you're missing (Score:3, Insightful)
They really went about it the wrong way. For example: There's this one geek news site that seems to be successful winthout any real journalists, real reporters, or even real editors.
Re:what you're missing (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot works fine when somebody is already writing about the topic of interest and is willing to give their material away for "free" (meaning free or with ads).
Salon (and every other decent magazine) pays people to write new material. Sure, they have stuff from an AP feed, but I can get an AP feed anywhere. What I'm buying with my subscription to Salon (or, say, The Economist) is that new material.
That material costs money to produce and more money to edit. That money has to get to the writers and editors somehow. How would you suggest?
Re:How did they lose $80 million? (Score:5, Informative)
Amazing what about 10 seconds of searching, a "financial" link, and a browser, will provide you.
Re:How did they lose $80 million? (Score:3, Insightful)
Can anyone make basic sense of this?
Re:Do you understand these financial sheets? (Score:3, Informative)
APIC = cumulative money the company received for issuing stock
Accumulated deficit = cumulative net losses of the company since inception (companies that have made money call this "retained earnings")
Re:How did they lose $80 million? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How did they lose $80 million? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How did they lose $80 million? (Score:2)
But how did they lose $80 million? (Score:2, Informative)
$80, 000, 000 !
1. I could see $1e6/yr for staff (ok, so they're probably terribly overstaffed!)
2. Toss in another $1,000,000/yr for facilites.
3. x (what, like, ) 7 years.
4. = $66 million PROFIT!
If these guys actually burned through $80, 000, 000 , they're doing something wrong! (of course there was a lot of that going around in the 90's!)
I don't even know what I'm doing, and I'm confident I could put together the equivalent for much less than that. The only difficulty would be getting the "A list" talent, and I'm not so sure that what they have is really that special.
Re:But how did they lose $80 million? (Score:3, Informative)
Operating expenses:
Production, content and product: $9.8M(2001) $10.1M(2000)
Sales and marketing: $7.1M(2001) $15.5M(2000)
For those counting, that's over $42 MILLION in operating expenses JUST between production, sales, and marketing in JUST the past two fiscal years. Looks like to me someone's spending too much on advertising and IT support... (or they have the most overpaid writers in the world)
Re:But how did they lose $80 million? (Score:3, Interesting)
The sales figures are slightly disappointing actually. Ideally you would like to see sales and marketing costs increasing year over year since a majority of those costs probably stem from paid commissions. The implication is that they lost more than half of their sales revenues last year.
Re:How did they lose $80 million? (Score:4, Informative)
It's the fact that web sites have to have content.
And Salon has a LOT of unique content, meaning writers and editors who all deserve to get paid.
Re:How did they lose $80 million? (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, is the absence of paper -- and a physical object -- less profitable than if you do what Salon is doing and go 100% electronic?
I seem to remember that Slate.com tried the deadtree thing -- along with their website -- and I remember that the Slate magazine was available in Starbucks. I actually *liked* the magazine -- as opposed to the annoying site (with its reader letters back and forth -- which strike me as the absolute height of pomposity and "in-joke-ness". If you just try to browse Slate, you're hit with all these things referencing other things -- and if you don't know what the "Fray" is and if you haven't been following all the oh-so-elegantly written missives between experts, you're lost. Salon *isn't* this way -- thank god. So I'm digressing, but everytime I think of Salon, I think of Slate and how annoying it is. Michael Kinsley is (was?) bad enough, but now that he's departed, the whiff of pomposity is still there.)
Anyway, I know Salon at one time had some pretty good writers writing for it. I was always fond of Camille Paglia's stuff. But apparently they shit-canned her and a bunch of other writers a year (two years?) ago. Hasn't been the same since.
Re:How did they lose $80 million? (Score:5, Funny)
That (hot grits) sounds (goatse) familiar (beowulf). Where (karma whore) have (first post!) I (Natalie Portman) seen (/. effect) that (anonymous coward) before? (troll)
Re:How did they lose $80 million? (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in 1997 I started a little website at 7am.com [7am.com].
It wasn't pretentious and simply sought to become a news aggregation site designed to save people time by bringing together links to the most interesting stories from all around the Web.
About this time I'd also just finished co-writing a book on Java (being a programmer from way-back) and it occured to me that I could syndicate my regularly updated list of headlines and links using Java-based news ticker.
Thus an empire was born!
Within a few short months, 7am.com had gone from getting just a few hundred hits a day, to getting half a million or so.
The News Ticker was a smart idea -- it allowed people to include regularly updated, topical information on their web-pages at no cost or effort.
Within a few short years there were over 200,000 third-party web-pages carrying the 7am.com news ticker and it was being hit around 2 million times per day.
By that time I'd also started publishing a "newswire" consisting of stories written by myself and a small group of other writers who were keen to get some experience in the (then) new and exciting world of online journalism.
Probably not a lot of people are aware, but 7am.com was (to the best of my knowledge) the very first website in the world to carry the pictures sent back from the surface of Mars by the Pathfinder mission in 1997. 7am.com beat NASA, CNN and all the other sites I checked by several minutes and -- thanks to the News Ticker's ability to "get the message out" to a heap of other sites, there were over 100K visitors within the first half hour of those images being posted.
The exact details of how this "scoop" was achieved is revealed in an upcoming book I'm writing.
7am.com also scooped most of the traditional media when NATO launched its attacks on Serb targets in Yugoslavia. One of our newshounds lived near an airport from which the B-52's were despatched and he filed a report within a minute or so of the first wave taking off.
The same thing happened in 1998 when the US and Britain attacked Iraq -- 7am.com got the news up first.
7am.com got the full Starr Report on Clinton's "misbehavior" online before many of the other news sites -- but we were smart enough to ZIP up our copy so that people could download it more quickly.
Our ability to scoop big (and small) stories like this, combined with the viral growth of our news ticker meant that 7am.com was ranked by NetRatings (now Neilsen/Net Ratings) as being more popular than Playboy.com, The BBC's news website, and right up there alongside FoxNews.
So why have I typed all this stuff?
Well here's the bottom line...
Until mid 1999, 7am.com was doing all this on a monthly budget of around US$7,000.
That's right -- the total cost of running what was, at the time, the world's most widely syndicated web-based news service, was just $84,000 a year. What's more -- there were months when revenues almost covered those costs so the actual operating loss was significantly less.
How was this achieved?
Simple -- 7am.com was a true "virtual newsroom" which took full advantage of the power the Net offers to slash overheads.
Although the webservers were located in San Diego, California, the "head office" of 7am.com was a tiny home-office in the New Zealand countryside, 10,000 miles away.
Total staff consisted of myself and two or three other part-time freelancers.
No Porsches in the carpark (no carpark!), no flash offices, no boozy lunches, no scooters in the hallway -- just a small group of people working their asses off and breaking some important new ground.
I have to admit that I worked 18 hours a day for four years without a single day off. In fact, I got an ear infection and had the rather unpleasant experience of my eardrum bursting because I was too busy to get to the doctor in time -- but hey, it's only pain eh?
About that time a group of VCs came along and said "we can take this business to the US and make a fortune". They promptly bought a majority stake in the business and set about "preparing it for sale".
Now remember, this was a business that had run very successfully on a shoestring budget for nearly four years and had built the largest syndication network of its type on the Net.
It had a very successful structure and operating model -- hell, it was even gearing up to make a profit!
Unfortunately, things changed dramatically once the VCs got their hands on the controls.
Suddenly the total outgoings jumped from $7K per month to nearer $120K per month. Offices were hired, staff recruited, new computers purchased, etc, etc, etc.
Suddenly seven figure sums were being consumed -- and, what's worse, the carefully crafted, and very successful publishing systems which had been put in place were being overhauled (ie: screwed around with) despite my objections.
To cut a long story short (buy the book if you want details
Phrases such as "you've got to spend money to make money" and "image is important" were bandied about freely.
I was told that nobody would be interested in investing in, or buying 7am.com if it didn't have "substance". The "virtual" concept had to be replaced by lots of people huddled in little cubicles it seemed.
My suggestions that surely profit was more important than "image" fell on deaf ears (perhaps I was once again ahead of my time eh?
The VCs ended up totally screwing the sale of the company, I got so frustrated I resigned, and now 7am.com continues to "chug along" but seems to have totally lost the spark, innovation and cutting-edge attitude that won it such success when the money-barons weren't in control.
By the way, I *am* serious about the book. There are literally thousands of "my secrets to success" type of books written by figureheads of business such as Richard Branson, Victor Kiam, etc -- mine has the working title "The secrets of failure".
I may not know what to do right in the world of business, but I sure have a very long list of things I've done wrong. Hopefully people will buy the book and learn from *my* mistakes rather than their own.
Let's face it, I must have screwed up real bad to come out of the dot-com boom with nothing but pocket change eh?
They have no chance in hell (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They have no chance in hell (Score:2)
You should subscribe ... (Score:2)
Why I cancelled my subscription (Score:5, Informative)
Their avantgo channel, however, had no method in place for Premium subscribers to get full stories on their PDAs! For a year, the premium stories would have their little teaser, then at the bottom there would be a little apology to the effect of 'Sorry, we haven't made a channel for our premium subscribers yet, but we will soon!'
Empty promises.
They never made the channel, and since my primary interface to Salon was via PDA, I wasn't getting what I had paid for (premium access).
Their business decision to indefinately postpone the premium channels have probably cost them quite a handful of customers, which is unfortunate.
Your problem: you used AvantGo (Score:2, Informative)
Kind of like Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
According to the article, they've lost about $79.7 million from their start in 1995.
During which time VA Software lost $725 million [yahoo.com].
Re:Kind of like Slashdot (Score:3, Funny)
On a big, cushy, VC-funded bed, I'm sure. ;-)
Ultramercials (Score:3, Funny)
Too Liberal (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Too Liberal (Score:4, Insightful)
Because god knows there aren't any outlets for conservatives anywhere else in the media.
Re:Too Liberal (Score:3, Insightful)
Anne Coulter actually had a hard time getting her book Slander published, and yet her book became an immediate best seller. Somewhere there is a serious disconnect with marketing people and what they think sells.
Re:Too Liberal (Score:3, Interesting)
Sometimes you read the news to be agreed with; sometimes you read the news to argue. But sometimes you just want to be informed, with a minimum of bias. Salon drove me away because its writers seemed to have a lot of difficulty dealing with that third case. I think that's what the complaint is here.
Re:Too Liberal (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't even mind some bias in what I read; hell, Slashdot is very biased (though I happen to agree with most (but not all!) of /.'s leanings...). But Salon went way too far with it. Many of their articles just seemed like flamebait to me, arguing for the sake of promoting the writer's ideology to the exclusion of all logic or sense.
Maybe I'd like Salon more if I were a serious far-lefter, but I'm pretty moderate on most issues. And for that reason I prefer to get my news in a way that is at least somewhat impartial. I mean, I want to be able to still seperate factual content from the writer's bias when I'm reading between the lines, and Salon just makes that difficult because the bias is so extreme. I used to read Salon a lot but it got to the point where I felt like most of the articles contained at least one blatent lie. That was too much and I quit visiting.
Re:Too Liberal (Score:2, Interesting)
You have no idea what leftwing really is!
Re:Too Liberal (Score:2)
You are exactly right, that's the main reason I stopped reading Salon just after they launched their subscription programme. I enjoy exposure to ideas that are in conflict with my own, but only if as you say there is an avenue for real debate and opposing views to be put. When they started to run into financial problems, I thought huh, maybe the Democrats can bail you out, 'cos I sure as hell won't be subsidizing you to attack my beliefs.
Too Conservative (Score:4, Insightful)
The remarkable thing about Salon is that it has actually broken a number of stories over the last half-dozen years. There are frequent examples of excellent writing (not all of it). Many people of influence keep track of what the journal is saying. That's quite an accomplishment, and a good deal more expensive to achieve than your average on-line reader-driven news clipping service (ahem).
I would not encourage them to try to be all things to all people, if such a thing were possible. Certainly there could be editorial improvements, but nothing would turn Salon into a fount of wealth. The fundamental problem is the as-yet unestablished business model for this kind of thing. Others are watching Salon cast about for the answer -- the magazine is even polling its readers' opinions -- to learn from their success or failure.
I finally did subscribe to Salon relatively recently -- I *hope* they don't go bankrupt! If they do, it will foretell decreased access to the online versions of traditional press, the failure of other online forums, and pressure on the rest to somehow raise profitability by increasing annoying advertising or other schemes. Despite it's far lower overhead,
Ask not for whom the bell tolls....
Take a page... (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, targeting specific consumers. Salon is out there covering much of the same material with the same slant as the mainstream media. Sure they do some innovative stuff and take a little more risk, but really not that often.
Re:Too Liberal (Score:2)
However, I'm a subscriber to both Salon and Slashdot, and I get my money's worth from them. I'll be sad to see either one go. (Hint, hint: will you be sad, too? Would it be worth a few dollars to you?)
Re:Too Liberal (Score:2)
You raise an interesting point. Where's the /.-like community at Salon? Slate has feedback but it's about as useful as Yahoo's boards for commenting on stories (no moderation == too many idiots). Then again, all those posts would probably mean more hardware/support costs. I don't know about a left vs. right slant in Salon (I just became a Green so I'm above it all now :-) but it is interesting reading, IMHO.
It's all probably moot, though. While their revenue is increasing I don't see how they're going to erase all that debt.
Re:Too Liberal (Score:3, Insightful)
You should try sticking your head out in the world beyond the US political track. Far left my arse.
Or perhaps reading the magazine. With such noted raving lefties like Andrew Sullivan as columnists...
Re:Too Liberal (Score:5, Insightful)
Good God, has the spectrum in the US moved that far to the right?
Salon may be left/center, but I don't recall seeing any articles demanding redistribution of land in the US or violently returning the means of production to the proletariat. Far left is Revolution, my friend, where you don't publish people like David Horowitz, you string them up in the city square.
Far left? Jesus F Christ...
I tried it two weeks ago (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I tried it two weeks ago (Score:2)
Special. I sat through the whole ad and then, at the end, I got to go to the page that told me to look at the ad again.
Me not read Salon. Them too lame. Me blog instead.
Why they failed... (Score:2, Interesting)
From reading comments in here, I get the feeling that Salon's material is below par. It should come as no surprise that Salon is dead, but I'm amazed that they have lost as much money as they have. I wonder what they pay (paid) their writers?
45,000 is small beans. Analagy to cable subscript. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think online communities are going to have a hard time selling to individuals. While the metaphore works for real world newspapers and magazines, their publishing numbers are going down. Less people are reading them because they can get free content on the web. Now, I totally believe you should pay for content, but it should be subscription based and not be on a per site basis. In a sense, it should work like AOL (I know, I know). With AOL, you get prepackaged content. I'm suggesting you pay xx.xx dollars and get a pass to 20 or 30 web sites that all use the same password. You should be able to sign up for these sites through different subscribers, like you would your domain registration or cable access. The web sites still get the same amount of money, but if one 'net-network can provide a lower price but sell to more people, they can compete. They could also provide different site packages or offer more sites.
Re:45,000 is small beans. Analagy to cable subscri (Score:2, Interesting)
The content providers have no incentive to employ a middleman for selling subscription packages in this scenario. Not when there's more money to be made by setting the price and selling access themselves.
It would only increase technical complexity too.
Re:45,000 is small beans. Analagy to cable subscri (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm talking about a reputable company offering subscriptions to CNN, WSJ, Slashdot, etc... In response to the other fellow who suggested sites wouldn't do this, I could not disagree more.
It costs much more for a company to maintain their own billing and subscription process than it does to receive a check every month from a middleman. The middleman is involved because he can give the user a REASON to buy the content. I'm not going to pay $19.95 a year per online magazine. I am going to pay that for 4,5, or maybe even 10 sites. Also, the individual sites do not have market themselves nearly as much because they will be getting advertisement though the middlemen.
If done right, it will work. We aren't talking about a no-name startup selling no-name content to uninterested people. This will likely be an initiative by a large corporation with an establed brand or reputation.
dear salon, (Score:3, Informative)
Right now, you should immediately switch and give away only 20% or less of your content and charge for the rest. Maybe you will still go out of business, but if you don't do this you are guaranteed to, running crazy ad deals for mercedes is not even close to a long term solution
Random Premium Content Rant (Score:2)
My favs are the cartoons (Carol Lay is a God(dess))
Carry Tennis
Andrew Sullivan.
Like the old Warez sites... (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess all kinds of marketing comes around. But the real question is, are people too cheap to pay for salon premium really going to buy Mercedes-Benzs?
I Love Salon... (Score:2)
The freeness of information on the net has forever tainted my opinion on things worth subscribing to, as it as done to many others. Eventually, this will lead to a ton of small sites that exist based on the owners love of whatever that site is about. The quality won't be the same, but I'll be damned if I'm paying a penny for any of that anymore.
Oh my -- it's bad (Score:2)
$79.7 million is a (relatively) small loss... (Score:3, Interesting)
It would take less than 200,000 new subscribers at the $30 rate for them to break even, less than 7% of the 2.7 million unique visitors they cite for December 2000.
The main problem, of course, is time.
Salon has been around since the beginning of the internet boom & have a loyal reader base. Unfortuntely, most of their readers are used to getting their info for free & at this point it's going to be an uphill battle to convince folks to cough up for what they've been using all along. Will they be able to do so before they have to declare bankruptcy? Let's hope not.
/. them while they're down (Score:5, Funny)
Liberal media (Score:3, Insightful)
Wake, work, pick up the kids, watch Friends, chat on AOL, sleep - repeat. Not much time left in that equation to develop a curiousity about politics (or the world in general, outside of your hometown and what you see on CNN).
It's a shame (Score:2, Interesting)
Debt, Writing and Survivability (Score:5, Insightful)
So I have to ask, was the 80M in debt really necessary? Personally, I like Salon, and it is one of only three news sites in my bookmarks (along with the BBC [bbc.co.uk] and the aforementioned Alternet.org), and I am a subscriber to their premium service. But the idea that writers won't write unless they're paid is a lot like the RIAA saying people won't make songs if they can't !@#$ you in the butt for $16.99/cd. Just doesn't make any sense. But it sure seems to make sense to Salon:
"The greatest weakness of Internet users -- all of us -- is our failure to recognize the value of intellectual property. Of course we love free access to information -- the more the better. For years, those of us who are information junkies have been like pigs in mud. It has been fun, but those something-for- nothing days are over. There is a difference between the Internet mantra that "information loves to be free" and free information."
There is a large talent pool in the world, Salon. Use it. Big names are nice but big names are why you won't exist in a few years. The notion that talented writers only write if you lob a lot of money at them is just as false for the written word as it is for music.
woo!! I am the angel of internet publication death (Score:4, Funny)
I subscribed to Yahoo internet life last year -- dead after 3 issues
I subscribed to Salon last month (admittedly I knew they've been in hot water more or less the last few years) and now this
I oughtta start charging these companies for my not subscribing to them...
The death of News Media as we know it (Score:3, Insightful)
What it will boil down to is journalists will have to actually do something other than play on peoples emotions because the truth i.e. facts will be readily available on the net. The net will allow small time journaliistic talents to be heard on a large scale. As it is today the chances of becoming a notable and famous journalist is smaller than becoming the next Eminem.
I'm personally sick of seeing Ashleigh Banfield on CNN dressed up like an Arab reporting on issues she 1) has no real clue about and 2) probably couldn't give a shit about anyway.
Hasn't anyone been watching CNN? They report the same 2-3 stories all day, everyday. When they have been beaten to death they report them 500 more times until they are sure everyone in America has been brainwashed by it. Then they find 2-3 more stories that are exactly the same but have different faces.
The liberal media is just out of this world these days. Nothing but crying and complaining and pointing fingers at everything and everyone.
The answer is independant media run by people who do it in their spare time. Much like open source software where multiple influences and ideas are used. Right now you have nothing like that in the media, most of the news agencies are run by large corporations (MSNBC anyone?), or are influenced heavily by liberal democrats who care little about real issues.
It's time we took the media into our own hands. There is no reason you can't report what is happening locally on your own webpage. Isn't this largely what slashdot is? It's news contributed by multiple sources for the benefit of it's own contributors. You get back what you put in.
I'll end my rant there.
I like this (Score:5, Insightful)
I just went to salon and read a premium article. Here is my synopsis...
If a 10 second ad can keep salon and their reporters working I'm all for it. The US needs independent journalists. (Even if they sometimes say things you'd rather not hear. Personally I'm offended by something in Salon every single day. If I wasn't, I wouldn't bother to read it.)
Read their Financial Data (Score:5, Interesting)
What interests me is that each of the two top execs made $300k last year. Not bad pay for shovelling venture capital down a hole, eh?
Salon's averageness is its problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
...not its dopey pro-rich-liberal bias or its coastline cliquishnes or its porn-driven, moronically desperate marketing schemes.
And they've gotten more average as they've asked for more money. You can turn on any cable news channel and see Andrew Sullivan and Arianna Huffington saying the same stupid things they say in their Salon columns. Greil Marcus writes for every magazine on earth. Tom Tomorrow and Lynda Barry are more widely syndicated than Seinfeld. Damien Cave's tech columns are no better than your average +4 Interesting
They've fired their best writers (Paglia, for example) to cut costs, and hired utterly average dead-tree columnists (why King Kaufman and Allen Barra instead of, say, Ralph Wiley?--what is this, 1982?), and just flat-out failed to bring in interesting new people who could liven things up (Jim Goad, Nick Gillespie and Justin Raimondo could probably use a few extra bucks from side jobs, for example).
Browse their archives from three to five years ago. The articles were mostly good. They were almost all interesting. Some were even surprising. But they waited until the site degenerated into PBS blandness (plus occasional class-baiting "I Was a Stripper for a Day" and "Trailer-Park Republicans: Whitey in the Wild" bilge and "classy" porn for prissy feminists and self-hating men) to start asking for money.
That--and simple mismanagement--is why they're broke. And they deserve it. "Lilies that fester..."
advertisers wisdom (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdotters should support Salon!! (Score:3, Interesting)
The only way for us to become aware of such abuses is to have a strong alternative to the mainstream media. So I would urge all slashdotters, even those who are usually apathetic to political issues, to invest some time and energy in political awareness and support for independent journalism. Otherwise, someday you may find yourself at the wrong end of a law enforcement process gone out of control.
mhack
We need Salon more than Salon needs us (Score:3, Interesting)
As many of my worthy peers have pointed it, Salon does lean a little left, no doubt about it. But given our country's recent and violent list to starboard, and our Democratic leaders' apparent unwillingness or inability to act like a real opposition party, we need magazines like this more than ever.
I'm subscribing (Score:3, Interesting)
I've never been a subscriber to Salon, and I wouldn't say their content is all great, but one of the things that worries me most these days is the airtight corporate control over all our major (and minor for the most part) media. Salon at least does some independent investigative journalism and is not afraid to print stories from one of my favorite journalists, Greg Palast, including his exposé [salon.com] of the Florida election theft in 2000, and his "re-exposé" [salon.com] of the same thing still going on in this year's election there. Also, Joe Conason's Journal is a regular Salon political column that is almost always great. I can get stuff like this elsewhere, but, sadly not often from a place as "reputable" as Salon. If Salon disappears the pickings will be even slimmer and the Palasts and Conasons of the world will be even more marginalized.
Investigative reporting costs tons of money, and even if Salon has the best of intentions, the bottom line will prevent them from doing lots of stories. Maybe we can use the slashdot effect to really make a difference, and not only save them, but give them the funds to actually improve. Our corporate government and out-of-control military-industrial complex need to keep the people blissfully ignorant in order to continue getting away with murder every day. Ownership of the media is their biggest weapon in this war against us, and so I've decided I can afford to pay $18.50 (or $30 with no ads) to try and save a dying breed. Who's with me?
Re:almost (Score:2)
"You are all geeks. I am the lone non-geek who has a real handle on life in a way none of you ever possibly could
Re:They don't know how to make business (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They don't know how to make business (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:They don't know how to make business (Score:4, Insightful)
- Start up
- Get lots of subscribers
- Sell out or IPO
Like in poker, they held a bad hand too long, and now they're dead. Big deal.Re:maybe... (Score:2)
That'd be interesting -- set up contracts so the writers get paid based on how many people read their pages or, better yet, click on ads in their articles.
I could see a whole new writing paradigm evolving, one where you have Suck-style links to products you mention in your article and other tomfoolery to try and get people to go spend money.
Of course, it's way too late for Salon to adopt this approach -- the only time they'll be bringing in money is when they auction off their office equipment.
Re:In other news... (Score:2)
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
Indymedia [indymedia.org]
BBC [bbc.co.uk]
or for some partial journalism / general questioning and sometimes odd, but certainaly not bland corp media
Michael Moore [michaelmoore.com]
DisInfo [disinfo.com]
then there are specialist sites for different topics -
Cryptome [cryptome.org]
Statewatch [statewatch.org]
Re:Well, duh! (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know about the rest of you, but I would think any company that could figure out how to give facials over the Internet would make a ton of money. I'd like to see a copy of THAT business plan !
Re:Terra-Lycos might buy Salon (Score:2)
Huh. Just had some friends laid off from Lycos.
They got Lycos *and* got lost.
I just wish there were, like, really rich people who were willing to fund interesting stuff like word.com or suck.com, kind of like that heiress lady giving $100million to a Poetry magazine [nytimes.com].
I mean, guess if they had always thought that way they wouldn't have their bajillions, but now that they do, it would be cool if they could fund worthy online ventures.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:2, Interesting)
Would you name them please?
Re:They stayed too far to the left. (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you seriously suggesting that Rush, Ollie North, and the other right wing guys have anything to offer other than attacking? During Clinton's presidency, all they did was attack, all the time screaming about Clinton's sex life? I've haven't read much in Salon that can truly be classified as an 'attack'. Criticism is different than an attack. Read Arianna Huffington's column, you'll get alternatives, not just attacks...