Salon.com Folds

The digital publishing industry model is an increasingly impossible one to sustain, and the latest casualty is Salon.com, the pioneering cultural and political website that many of us grew up reading daily. In the 2000s, there was very little else like it on the Internet: It was like EW and Mother Jones all rolled into one publication, and it was home to some of my favorite writers: Cintra Wilson, Stephanie Zacharek, and Heather Havrilesky.

In the 2010s, at the peak of Pajiba, many of our articles were syndicated on Salon. We ultimately ended that partnership for some of the same reasons many of stopped reading it regularly: They would rewrite our headlines into spectacularly misleading clickbait that sometimes didn’t reflect the content of the article (and would get us in trouble with readers who only read headlines). I also felt, during the Trump era, that it became a one-stop-shop for doomscrolling and that it fed almost exclusively on outrage. Ironic that it would shutter the day after the beginning of the end of the Trump era.

But, it was amazing in its heyday and it was one of the last remaining independent digital publications in an era where independent digital publications don’t have much of a fighting chance. “The business realities of independent digital journalism have changed profoundly over the years. After careful consideration, we have reached the difficult decision that our publishing model is no longer sustainable,” the site wrote in its final post.

It’s a heartbreaker. But it also survived 31 years, which is an exceptional run for any business, much less one trying to survive on the Internet. Congrats on run, Salon.