We haven't meant to keep readers in the dark by saying our daily gossip and culture digest, the Fix, is on hiatus; we've been deciding what to do. A few weeks back our very talented Fix writer, Scott Lamb, tired of waking at the crack of dawn to scour gossip columns and took a job that allowed him to lead a normal life. I think he did a terrific job with the Fix for the past few years, and you seem to have agreed. In fact, in its varying iterations, our gossip coverage has been one of our most popular features going back eight years, since Amy Reiter's Nothing Personal column debuted in Salon in April 1999.
But the world has changed a lot since then. The cultural obsession with celebrity has caused an explosion of gossip and gossip sites on the Web. There's so much of it out there, we ultimately had to wonder if our own energy wasn't put to better use on other areas we'd like to cover. We have a presidential election starting a year early, a war in Iraq, a new technology industry and culture boom, and increasing demand for video from our readers. (And yes, we're revamping Video Dog a bit; stay tuned and thanks for your patience.) At Salon we have been guided by the goal of doing what isn't being done very much, and doing what we do very well -- and we're not sure we can say both things about celebrity gossip right now. So, after much consideration, and some sadness (I was a Fix junkie personally), we've decided to pull the plug on the Fix. That's not to say we won't consider some sort of daily cultural digest in the future (and if you have ideas for a new culture or celebrity gossip blog or digest, please let us know). But for now, we are focusing on some new features we'll be rolling out in the next few months that we're very excited about, including expanded technology coverage and new approaches to video. More on all of that later.
For now, it's farewell, Fix. You'll be missed.
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