Salon, one of the earliest general-interest publications built for the web, announced Thursday that it was ceasing operations after 31 years. The left-leaning news and opinion site, which helped define digital journalism in the 1990s, said the business realities of running an independent online publication had become unsustainable.
“Today, after 31 years, we are saddened to announce that Salon is ceasing publication,” the outlet wrote in a farewell post on its own site. The company said that “the business realities of independent digital journalism have changed profoundly over the years” and that “after careful consideration, we have reached the difficult decision that our publishing model is no longer sustainable.” Salon added that it “was never just a website. It was an idea about what journalism could be, born at a moment when the internet was still a largely unexplored frontier.”
Salon launched in November 1995, and according to The Guardian, it was founded in San Francisco, with the closure announcement arriving just weeks before its November 20 anniversary. The Guardian noted that the Columbia Journalism Review had described Salon in 2011 as the oldest general-interest publication on the internet, and that the site had won Time magazine's website of the year award in 1996 and BusinessWeek's best website honor in 1997.
Decades of Downsizing Before the End
The closure followed years of newsroom contraction, according to TheWrap, which reported that Salon had experienced repeated rounds of downsizing before it finally shut down. TheWrap also pointed to a broader industry crunch, noting that entertainment and media layoffs rose 18% in 2025, with more than 17,000 jobs cut across the sector. The outlet's own statement attributed its demise to the same forces, saying those shifting business realities had made its model untenable, as News4Jax also reported in its coverage of the announcement.
News4Jax reported that Salon's announcement did not immediately indicate what would become of its employees, though some reported they had lost their jobs. The outlet also noted that Salon did not immediately say what would happen to its online archives, which include three decades of published stories.
From a Bookstore-Backed Startup to a Crypto-Linked Owner
Salon's ownership history traced a long and winding path, according to The New York Times, which reported that the site was founded by journalist David Talbot in 1995 and was financially backed over the years by Apple, Adobe, and the now-defunct bookstore chain Borders. The Times reported that Salon was sold to entrepreneurs Chris Richmond and Drew Schoentrup for $5 million in 2019, and was later bought by Find.co for an undisclosed sum in 2023. Find.co is based in Malta and describes itself as a performance marketing ecosystem for crypto brands, per the same report.
That 2019 sale price reflected a dramatic decline from Salon's earlier valuation. According to Digiday, the $5 million deal stood in sharp contrast to the $107 million the company was valued at when it went public in 1999. Digiday reported that by May 2019 Salon had fewer than 30 full-time employees and had attracted just 1.2 million unique users that April, down 84 percent from two years earlier. The outlet also noted that Salon had been one of the first digital-native publications to put up a paywall, doing so in 2001, and that it had nearly 90,000 paying subscribers at its 2014 peak, each paying around $30 a year.
A Launching Pad for Notable Journalists
Over its three decades, Salon expanded from books, culture, and ideas coverage into politics and technology, according to the Times. The site's roster of journalists over the years included Glenn Greenwald, Joan Walsh, and Michelle Goldberg, while Steve Kornacki served as the site's politics editor and Jake Tapper worked for Salon as a Washington correspondent early in his career, per the same report. Erin Keane serves as Salon's chief content officer, the Times reported, and a Salon spokesperson declined to comment further on the decision. The Times also reported that the editorial team received the closure notice on Thursday morning and was told the publication was closed effective immediately.
Salon's shutdown adds to a string of online news closures in recent years. The New York Times reported in January 2024 that The Messenger had closed less than a year after it launched, calling it one of the biggest busts in the history of online news. Salon's much longer run, and its early status as a website-of-the-year honoree, set it apart from that more recent flameout, even as both outlets ultimately succumbed to the shifting economics of digital publishing.
