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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Salon, one of the early internet’s most influential websites that featured sharp voices and political and cultural journalism with a liberal sensibility, announced Thursday it would shut down after 31 years of publication. “It has been an extraordinary privilege,” the outlet said in a farewell note.
The announcement, seen as a surprise, cited the fact that “the business realities of independent digital journalism have changed profoundly over the years.” It did not immediately indicate what would become of its employees, though some reported they had lost their jobs. A spokesperson for the outlet said 19 full-time employees had been affected, as well as a handful of private contractors.
“Over three decades, Salon has brought together politics, culture, criticism and ideas in a way that was distinctly our own,” the unsigned farewell note said. “Our journalism examined power and politics, questioned assumptions, surfaced stories that deserved attention and made room for perspectives that were too often overlooked. Our writers and editors helped shape conversations about the forces changing our lives.”
Salon began its life in the mid-1990s, barely three years after the internet itself went mainstream and a time when the “World Wide Web” was still written out in that fashion. It launched a decade before the newspaper and print magazine markets imploded -- and a decade, too, before the rise of social media fragmented the journalism world.
As its name suggested, Salon was initially styled as an online magazine and meeting place, a site where more provocative opinions and stories that might not be at home in daily newspapers or even then-dominant newsweeklies like Time or Newsweek could surface and generate discussion. It quickly became a place where writers wanted their work to appear.