Salon's magazine covers a variety of topics. American politics is a major focus, but by no means the only one. It has extensive reviews and articles about music, books, and films. It also has articles about "modern life" in all its forms, including relationships and sex. It covers technology, with a particular focus on the free software/open source movement.
Salon covers all of these issues from an unashamedly liberal political viewpoint, though has feature regular columns from such conservatives as David Horowitz and Andrew Sullivan.
Its online subscription-only discussion boards, Table Talk, are quite popular.
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As one of the earliest and most prominent web-only media outlets, Salon.com's history is reflective of the difficulties in creating a profitable business selling original, professionaly-produced media content over the Internet. On June 22, 1999, Salon.com IPO'd on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Though dot-com speculation had nearly reached its peak by then, the performance of Salon.com's stock was mediocre, reflecting investor skepticism about its business model.
Such skepticism would soon be confirmed as Salon.com announced ever-increasing total losses. On November 13, 2002, the company announced it had burned through nearly $80 million in capital. By February 2003 it was having diffculty paying its rent, and made an appeal for donations to keep the company running. This seems to have succeeded in staving off a discontinuation of services, as Salon.com is still operating as of the summer of 2003.
Needless to say, though, Salon.com is still in a precarious financial position, despite having signed over 50,000 subscribers. Its stock has been delisted from the NASDAQ exchange and currently trades as an over-the-counter penny stock for several cents a share.
Below is an overview of Salon.com's business model and operations, ordered by advancing date:
History
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 racked up $83.6 million in losses since its inception, and its stock traded for 5 cents on the over-the-counter bulletin board. David Talbot, Salon's chairman and editor-in-chief at the time became the new chief executive. Elizabeth "Betsy" Hambrecht, Salon's CFO, became the president.
Books published
External links