Salon.com

Salon.com

URL	Salon.com
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Online Magazine
Registration	Optional
Editor	Kerry Lauerman
Launched	1995

Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group (OTCBB: SLNM), often just called Salon, is an online magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication.^{[citation needed]} The magazine focuses on U.S. politics and current affairs, and on reviews and articles about music, books and films.

Salon's headquarters are located west of downtown San Francisco, California. Its current Editor in Chief is Kerry Lauerman. Long-time Editor in Chief Joan Walsh stepped down from that position in November 2010 to concentrate on writing a book, but has stayed on at Salon.com as Editor at Large.

Content and coverage

Salon magazine covers a variety of topics. It has reviews and articles about music, books, and films. It also has articles about "modern life", including relationships, friendships and human sexual behavior. It covers technology, with a particular focus on the free software/open source movement.

Salon has always been an interactive site to some degree. The "salon" concept is played out in The WELL, and since 2005, comments on editorial stories open to registered readers.

In 2008, Salon launched its biggest interactive initiative, Open Salon, a social content site/blog network for its readers.

Responding to the question "how far do you go with the tabloid sensibility to get readers?", former Salon.com editor-in-chief David Talbot said:

Is Salon more tabloid-like? Yeah, we've made no secret of that. I've said all along that our formula here is that we're a smart tabloid. If by tabloid what you mean is you're trying to reach a popular audience, trying to write topics that are viscerally important to a readership, whether it's the story about the mother in Houston who drowned her five children or the story on the missing intern in Washington, Chandra Levy.

Key people

Regular contributors include the political opinion writers Glenn Greenwald and Alex Pareene; political analyst Steve Kornacki and David Sirota; critics Laura Miller and Andrew O'Hehir; pop-culture columnist Mary Elizabeth Williams; aviation columnist Patrick Smith; Tracy Clark-Flory writing on feminist and gender topics; advice columnist Cary Tennis; and economics writer Andrew Leonard.

David Talbot is founder and original editor-in-chief. He has served several stints as CEO, most recently replacing Richard Gingras who left to join Google as head of news products in July 2011. Kerry Lauerman is the editor-in-chief. Gail Williams manages The WELL. Norman Blashka is the CFO and VP of Operations.

History

Salon was founded by David Talbot and was first published in 1995. It purchased the virtual community The WELL in April 1999, and made its initial public offering of Salon.com on the NASDAQ stock exchange on June 22 of that year.

Salon Premium, a pay-to-view (online) content subscription was introduced on April 25, 2001. The service signed over 130,000 subscribers and staved off discontinuation of services. However, less than two years later, in November 2002, the company announced it had accumulated cash and non-cash losses of $80 million, and by February 2003 it was having difficulty paying its rent, and made an appeal for donations to keep the company running.

On October 9, 2003, Michael O'Donnell, the chief executive and president of Salon Media Group, said he was leaving the company after seven years because it was "time for a change." When he left, Salon.com had accrued $83.6 million in losses since its inception, and its stock traded for 5¢ on the OTC Bulletin Board. David Talbot, Salon's chairman and editor-in-chief at the time, became the new chief executive. Elizabeth "Betsy" Hambrecht, then Salon's chief financial officer, became the president.

In July 2008, Salon launched Open Salon, a "social content site" and "curated blog network". It was nominated for a 2009 National Magazine Award. in the category "best interactive feature."

On June 10, 2011, Salon closed its online chat board Table Talk. While there was heartfelt sentiment from the board's first manager about Table Talk closing, Salon.com has not yet given an official reason why they ended this section of their site.

Business model and operations

Aspects of the Salon.com site offerings, ordered by advancing date:

• Free content, around 15 new articles posted per-day, revenues wholly derived from in-page advertisements.
  • Per-day new content was reduced for a time.
• Salon Premium subscription. Approximately 20% of new content made available to subscribers only. Other subscription benefits included free magazines and ad-free viewing. Larger, more conspicuous ad units introduced for non-subscribers.
• A hybrid subscription model. Readers now can read content by viewing a 15-second full screen advertisement to earn a "day pass" or gain access by subscribing to Salon Premium.
• After Salon Premium subscriptions declined from about 100,000 to 10,000 it was rebranded in 2011 as Salon Core subscriptions featuring a different mix of benefits.

Books published by editors and contributors

• George, Don (editor). Wanderlust: Real-Life Tales of Adventures and Romance (2001). ISBN 0333905024
• Leibovich, Lori (editor). Maybe Baby: 28 Writers Tell the Truth About Skepticism, Infertility, Baby Lust, Childlessness, Ambivalence, and How They Made the Biggest Decision of Their Lives (2006). ISBN 0-06-073781-6
• Manjoo, Farhad. True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society (2008). ISBN 9780470050101
• Miller, Laura (editor). The Salon.Com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors (2000). ISBN 0-14-028088-X
• Miller, Laura. The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia (2010). ISBN 0316017639
• Pareene, Alex. A Tea People's History (2011). ISBN 978-0-615-53212-7
• Peri, Camille (editor), Moses, Kate (editor). Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood (2000). ISBN 0-671-77468-9
• Tracy Quan's novels continue the story begun in the Salon series Nancy Chan: Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl.
  • Quan, Tracy. Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl (2001). ISBN 978-0-609-60724-4
  • Quan, Tracy. Diary of a Married Call Girl: A Nancy Chan Novel (2005). ISBN 978-1-4000-5354-4
  • Quan, Tracy. Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl (2008). ISBN 978-0-00-724938-1
• Rosenberg, Scott. Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software (2007). ISBN 978-1-4000-8247-6
• Smith, Patrick. Ask the Pilot: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel (2004). ISBN 1594480044
• Sweeney, Jennifer Foote (editor). Life As We Know It: A Collection of Personal Essays from Salon.com (2003). ISBN 978-0743476867
• Tennis, Cary. Since you asked (2007). ISBN 978-0979327001
• Williams, Mary Elizabeth. Gimmie Shelter (2009). ISBN 978-1416557081

External links

• Salon.com website
• Salon 1999
• Open Salon
• Timeline
• Salon.com stock (SLNM.OB) historical performance
• Salon buys The WELL
• The WELL
• Interview with Salon editor David Talbot at Journalismjobs.com