So Long, Salon. We’ll Miss You
The publication’s legacy, as told to us by its editors and writers
On November 5, after 31 years in business, the pioneering news site Salon announced it would cease publication that same day. The history of the digital outlet tracks the history of the World Wide Web. For every trend in digital publishing, you can bet that Salon tried it, from digital ads, to moderated comments sections, to cryptocurrency-mining-as-ad-block-alternative.
From culture-junkie roots, the online magazine’s editors launched a nimble, politically progressive news organization that helped influence the internet’s role as a public sphere. It produced some of the key cultural-political stories and packages of the 2000s and 2010s, like the post-9/11 “war reader”, a syllabus on Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden compiled by Anthony York, and Steve Kornacki’s earnest coming out story. In 1998, the online site published a major scoop detailing how House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, who played a central role in the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton, had an extramarital affair in the 1960s. There was, well, also that Jake Tapper “Gangbanging in media land” piece. Writers like Tapper, Glenn Greenwald, Joan Walsh, and Michelle Goldberg passed through the Salon parlor room before becoming the pillars of the media world that we know them to be.
Ultimately, the site succumbed to “business realities of independent digital journalism,” according to a farewell note on the homepage that is signed simply “Salon.” The magazine’s publishing model, which included revenue with advertising and paid subscriptions, was no longer sustainable. Find.co, a cryptocurrency marketing company, had purchased Salon for an undisclosed sum in November 2023 from Chris Richmond and Drew Schoentrup, who had previously paid $5 million for the publication in August 2019.
To remember Salon’s legacy, I spoke to folks whose experience spanned 1995 to 2026: co-founder Scott Rosenberg; Joel Whitney, author of The Paris Review-CIA exclusive; Annemarie Dooling, 2010s comments section pioneer; and arts critic Coleman Spilde.
These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Scott Rosenberg was part of the crew of editors and writers with alt-weekly roots who founded Salon in 1995. Before Salon, he worked at the San Francisco Examiner with David Talbot and several other founders. He also was an early adopter of personal website publishing. He helped launch the site and worked at the publication for the next decade. In his time, he saw the internet grow up and digital media transform. There was even talk, he said, at one point, of a Salon cruise, à la The Nation cruise, but as far as he could remember, a hurricane put a stop to the plan.
Scott Rosenberg: Almost all of the founders were people who had worked at the San Francisco Examiner. During the newspaper strike in San Francisco in 1994, we put out what was called a strike paper, a daily news website that we produced while on strike. When we went back to our jobs, our editors at the Examiner were vindictive. My colleague, David Talbot, always wanted to start a magazine. But no one was putting money into a new general interest magazine, even, you know, 30 years ago. He pivoted and said, well, let’s do this on the web.