Salon says it will shut down after 31 years, citing changed business realities for independent journalism

The Story

Salon, an early and influential online publication known for political and cultural journalism, announced Thursday that it will shut down after 31 years of publication.

In a farewell note, Salon said, “It has been an extraordinary privilege,” and pointed to what it called “the business realities of independent digital journalism” that have changed “profoundly over the years.”

The outlet said the closure has affected 19 full-time employees and a handful of private contractors, and it did not immediately say what would happen to its employees after the shutdown.

“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. It added that the publication’s “journalism examined power and politics, questioned assumptions, surfaced stories that deserved attention and made room for perspectives that were too often overlooked,” with writers and editors helping “shape conversations about the forces changing our lives.”

Salon said it has no immediate plans to take down its online archives, which it described as including three decades of stories across topics and genres.

The publication also thanked its readers in the farewell statement, saying, “You came to Salon for the journalism, the dialogue, the essays, the criticism, the unexpected discoveries and the sense that there was a place on the internet where ideas mattered.” It added that readers “read, shared, challenged, subscribed, wrote to us and kept coming back,” and that their engagement “made Salon a publication and a community.”

Salon began in the mid-1990s, shortly after the internet went mainstream, and launched as an online magazine and meeting place where more provocative opinions and stories could surface and generate discussion. The outlet drew a range of writers, including Jake Tapper and Glenn Greenwald, and its editors-in-chief David Talbot and Joan Walsh later became prominent progressive political voices.

On its five-year anniversary in 2000, founder David Talbot said, “The timing was right — readers were tired of bland, market-tested media products, and the internet allowed us to launch something original, something with a strong voice.”