Happy anniversary. Subscribing to your premium service seemed like a shot in the dark, but it's paid off in spades. You are, as you claim, a welcome voice of sanity and common sense in a media swamp dominated by corporate distortion and/or lightweight pontificating. Keep up the good work.
-- Teymoor Nabili
You folks have a wonderful thing going. Where else can someone, for the price of a year-long subscription to a monthly, get great, new reads every day?
I look forward to subscribing next year as well, and have recommended Salon Premium to everyone I can.
-- Greg Kirkos
Just wanted to let you know how much I've enjoyed the time I've spent reading Salon this year. I'm not sure I'm a typical reader -- 48 years old, conservative Republican, evangelical Christian, happily married with eight kids, junior high music teacher. While there are some parts of your magazine that I steer away from, I have found your sections on life, politics, religion and the news to be refreshing and enlightening. I often find myself forwarding your articles to friends and co-workers at school and church. Keep up the good work!
-- Bob Denton
Salon magazine is the best alternative source of real news on the Net, or anywhere in the U.S. for that matter.
I don't consider myself an alarmist, misanthrope or politically extreme to either the left or right. I am, however, absolutely scared shitless by the gains in popularity and intrusion into the government of the extreme right wing (and let's be honest, these folks are extreme and scary with very old, and very dangerous, half-baked ideas and ambitions; they even scare "old time" conservatives like William F. Buckley).
Voices like Salon give me hope that there are still places where balanced information can still be had and perhaps America's flirtation with fascist-style government and philosophies will be only temporary and the country can eventually drift back toward the center someday ... Your magazine gives me hope, and I want to thank you for that!
The reason I am writing this letter is that I believe your reliance on "Premium service" will condemn your magazine in the long run. You rejoice in the fact that there are 36,000 premium subscribers ... I would hazard to guess that millions of people troll through the Drudge report each year.
Do you see the problem, 36,000 subscribers might help pay the bills, but it is simultaneously making your magazine irrelevant because an insignificant portion of the population will ever read your excellent articles.
In my opinion, in the long run, Salon must find a way to provide its content free, or expand into more conventional print.
Having said that, my best wishes to you and your staff and keep up the excellent work!
-- John Dries
Editor's note: While Salon Premium has over 36,000 subscribers, the free portion of our site -- which most days amounts to roughly three-quarters of the articles we publish -- continues to attract over 3 million readers each month.
I am a Premium subscriber -- I believe it was the piece on Susan Sontag responding to her critics post-Sept. 11 that pushed me over the edge -- and I have not regretted it for one moment. I just wanted to respond to David Talbot's piece about how crucial independent journalism is now by saying I personally don't know what I would do if I did not have your publication to read every day. I am constantly amazed by the quality of your features; I can't even feel guilty about cutting and pasting and sending the exclusives to my nonsubscriber friends because I feel they are too good and too important not to be shared. I will say this, however: if a future additional monetary contribution from me will make the difference to Salon's survival, please do not hesitate to ask. I will provide it with pleasure.
-- Sarah Elizabeth Blodgett
Thank you for providing an important source of independent journalism. Salon is especially important to me since the mainstream media represents a homogenized, corporate view of the world that skews perspective and severly limits debate.
I am proud to be a Premium subscriber. Keep up the good work.
-- Louis S. Revesz
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