Source: The Industry Standard
By: Deborah Asbrand
Sex sells, and the mainstream media want their share of the booty, so to speak. No, we don’t mean Salon, which today starts charging $30 for an ad-free read of some of its reporting and images, including its sex-related content. We mean the media covering Salon’s news. From the scandalized headlines out there, you’d think Salon was now targeting the folks in trenchcoats exiting the Pussycat Palace at midday.
We’re here to tell you: relax. According to outlets, Salon Premium subscribers will get to escape the clutches of online ads and access dispatches on politics, extra columns and audio downloads of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories. As for the sex-related columns and images once bunched under its "Sex" tab, they, too, will require the annual admission fee.
So as not to appear too lowbrow, Salon says it’s featuring the "erotic art and photography" in "galleries." (Pass the espresso with a lemon twist.) Headline writers skipped the politics and literary downloads and went with the site’s alleged peddling of dirty pix. "Salon’s Premium Porn," riffed Inside over a shortie on the change. "Salon.com Offers Sex" panted CNNfn. Not every outlet went for sex: The San Jose Mercury News and Los Angeles Times ran the same Reuters feed as CNNfn but assigned it a more demure headline about the premium service launch.
The San Francisco Chronicle was among the few outlets that examined the business issues behind the move. Will Salon reap the revenues it needs to stay alive? Reporter Dan Fost compared Salon’s plea to a briefer version of public radio’s insufferable pledge drives: If 2 percent of the site’s users subscribe, Salon will make $1.6 million this year, Fost said.
ABCNews.com explored the potential bliss of reading online without the in-your-face annoyances of banner and pop-up ads (what, you didn’t want the little wireless camera?). As for Salon’s chances of success, ABCNews’ Michael James quoted the following shrug from Gartner Group’s Walter Janowski: "I think Salon could have some reasonable success, given that they have a little bit of a cult status in what’s left of the old-world Internet community." In other words, if the Pussycat can figure out a way to stay in business, so can Salon.
