Salon

Holy hopping horse hockey! The San Francisco Chronicle has an article about Salon’s finances. A couple of interesting tidbits -

- 60 full time staffers
- $2.5 million of losses on $2.1 million revenue for the last year
- 73,000 subscribers

Rolling Stone is throwing $800,000 at the dot mag over the next year - I wonder if it’ll do any good.

I’ll be honest - I’ve pretty much abandoned the site, since it went all liberal all the time. I swung by before posting this rant, and the new bits were mostly similar to this about a self-parody of the “Bush in 30 Seconds” ads.

I checked out the bit on Liberal Oasis. The ad itself is pretty darn funny IMO, it confirms what I’ve thought was the campaign strategy of many on the left. But Spittle can’t avoid both self aggrandization (Like “all your base are belong to us,” the phrase “Don’t be an Asshole, Vote Democratic” is now part of the Internet lexicon. McAuliffe can thank me later.) and condecension (Then hit counts notched up further courtesy of angry conservatives who, through no fault of their own, didn’t understand the context and really thought the DNC had stooped to calling President Bush “a lying sack of horseshit.”).

A relatively balanced article extrapolates the number of “casualties” from the first Gulf War out to about 170,000 based on the number of folks who have filed with the VA, without noting that their figure, about 25% of veterans filing as disabled, is pretty consistient with historical figures on folks getting out of the military in general. Part of that is because the VA will lable a vet as disabled if there is anything physically wrong with them that wasn’t wrong when they went into the military. So some vets go in at 18, in perfect health, spend four or five years humping packs, working on industrial gear, etc, and when they get out at 23 (or later), age begins to catch up with them. The VA, looking out for vets as it’s charged to, will go ahead and give them a medical disability classification for almost any potential problem so that the government is covered in the event that years down the line something develops. A friend had been in to see a Navy doc while on active duty for a sprained knee during a softball game; the VA noted the injury in their physical and made a notation that he was disabled, with a 0% disability currently. So my friend is a DV now, despite being a marathon runner. The 170K casualties story is a blatant attempt to insinuate that the Army is less than honest with recruits, and makes light of both the success of the Coalition during Gulf War 1, and minimizes the sacrifice of previous generations of American warfighters where actual combat lead to losses in the magnitude claimed by Salon. Not exactly a “fair and balanced” story.

Not to get bogged down too hard in nitpicking the misrepresentation of facts or the sheer ego involved in most of the Salon articles I’ve read recently, here are my suggestions for turning Salon around:

1. 60 staffers? Draw straws, people, and fire up the espresso machine in the office instead of sending out Bob - There are staff cuts that need to be made. I’d also ditch some of the big names on the roster - one of the draws about Salon initially was that it showed that there were good, intelligent writers out there who weren’t getting a fair shake in traditional media. But now the Mag (Site? Whatever.) is weighed down with tired, traditional voices like Arianna Huffington and Joe Conason (Who’s gone off the deep end and claimed that Bush’s call to Mars was only so Halliburton could drill for oil there, then half-heartedly explained he was only kidding a couple days later, not to mention praising the CIA for leaking classified information in the same article he blasts the Administration for leaking same…) Plus, staff cuts could be seen as a contribution to the Democrat candidate - more jobs lost thanks to Bush.

2. Tie in to a print mag. It looks like they’re doing this with Rolling Stone; I seem to recall something similar with another traditional publication a while ago.

3. Look hard at costs. Realize you are, after all, a web-site. Reduce the square footage you’ve got in San Francisco, maybe let the peons do a little more telecommuting.

I’d like to say that Salon needs to move back to the center to reach profitibility, but even I don’t buy that. Rush Limbaugh has shown that it’s possible to make money hand over fist with an ideoligically polarized website, and we all know that there’s more rich leftists on the ‘Net than rich right wingers. Even if Salon continues its slide to the left, it should be able to sustain, and probably increase its revenue streams and subscriber base. IMO, they’ll actually probably increasing revenue from continuing to tilt further left. True believers are always willing to throw more money at their causes.

Salon probably has the best business model out there for online pubs. I don’t know how much the ad-driven day pass brings in versus subscribers, but it’s a pretty innovative way to make sure that people put eyes on the advertiser’s products; leaps and bounds over banner ads. And it’s an innovative way to hook eyeballs and encourage subscription without being overlly intrusive (I don’t think you even need to register to get a day pass). Hopefully, they patented the model, and have some of their 60 person staff out stumping the idea to other sites. Here’s a concept - free porn for a day if you look at an ad for herbal viagra… Salon’s day pass could do just that.

Lastly, I’m saddened that Salon has wandered far left of center, but I don’t wish them ill by any means. It happened in Houston with the Pacifica station who went from a primarily local music venue to a primarily alternative politics venue, losing several long-time DJs. But, looking at the financial statements on their sites, revenue is up, and they’re putting cash in the bank for future expenses. And that’s with a pretty significant decline in grant money, meaning that donations have really picked up. They’ve lost me as a listener, but they are obviously better serving their clientele. There’s little reason that Salon should not be breaking even. The market is out there. I just wish that there was more of a market for middle-of-the-roaders like me.

Posted by jank at January 16, 2004 7:54 PM