Salon, the left-leaning news and opinion website that was early to online publishing, said on Thursday that it would shut down after more than 30 years.
In an unsigned announcement posted on its website, Salon said the “business realities of independent digital journalism” had changed profoundly and that “our publishing model is no longer sustainable.”
“Salon was never just a website,” the announcement added. “It was an idea about what journalism could be, born at a moment when the internet was still a largely unexplored frontier.” A spokesperson declined to comment further on the decision, pointing to the announcement.
Salon was started in 1995 by the journalist David Talbot as a digital magazine covering books, culture and ideas at a time before blogging and online news had taken off. It was financially backed by Apple, Adobe and the now-defunct bookstore chain Borders.
Over the years, it became known for its politically progressive views and expanded to cover politics and tech. It employed a number of well-known journalists, including Glenn Greenwald, Joan Walsh and Michelle Goldberg. Steve Kornacki, the beloved data nerd at NBC News, was at one point Salon’s politics editor, while CNN’s Jake Tapper also worked for the site as a Washington correspondent early in his career.
The publication, which had weathered financial ups and downs over the decades, was sold in August 2019 for $5 million to the entrepreneurs Chris Richmond and Drew Schoentrup. It was then bought in November 2023 by Find.co, a Malta-based company that describes itself online as a “performance marketing ecosystem” for crypto brands, for an undisclosed sum. Erin Keane, Salon’s chief content officer, said in a post on the social platform Bluesky, that the editorial team was told on Thursday morning that “the publication was closed, effective immediately.”
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