Salon's Latest Letter to the Editor
by Stephanie Kuenn
Every two months or so,
Salon's editors post a letter on their site summarizing the singular content the magazine provides, asserting that rumors of Salon's demise are exaggerated and begging for subscriptions and cash so the magazine can remain financially solvent. Sanctimonious and filled with emotional appeals, the letters warn readers that they must subscribe, or else they'll lose the last bastion of high-minded, serious, investigative journalism with a leftist bent on the Internet.
The Jan. 22 letter, for instance, explained that readers must either subscribe or click through several ads to get to Salon's content — in fact, Salon's survival depended upon it. Couched inside the letter's rhetoric were a few reasonable points. Salon's stable
of writers and reporters is among the best out there, and they do provide content and insights not necessarily represented elsewhere. And $30 a year really isn't that much to ask. All the same, it's pretty annoying to see a company solicit money when
the back rent it owes is equivalent to roughly five times the average American's salary.
But Salon's previous letters from the editors never trampled upon the boundaries of
good taste the way the March 18 letter has.
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In the letter, Scott Rosenberg, Salon's managing editor, notes that Salon will have some of the most daring, uncensored coverage of the war — coverage that's already started with Farhad Manjoo's story about U.S. companies that will profit from rebuilding a Saddam-less
Iraq and the news that an astonishing 44 percent of all Americans believe Iraq had something to do with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Their war correspondent is not embedded with U.S. troops. Instead, he snuck into Iraq by raft in the dead of the night, all to bring you unfettered, unobstructed coverage.
That's all fine. It's good to know that someone out there isn't willing to roll over for the current administration and instead will report what's really going on. Salon clearly will take
risks that other publications won't and should be congratulated for that.
But then Rosenberg gets to the point of the letter: Salon needs your cash. Now.
"Original investigative reporting is the most costly kind of journalism to practice," Rosenberg writes. "Despite three years of a tech slump and an economic downturn, we've persevered. But we need your subscriptions, now more than ever."
It's great that Salon is taking these risks and reporting information that other news sources ignore. But to use this war — a war that the majority of the world believes unnecessary, one that will result in the loss of thousands of innocent lives and drive the United States into deeper economic trouble — as a reason to fund a magazine greatly cheapens its integrity.
It's fair to tout exclusive content and to do what has to be done to stay alive and publishing. But it's shameful to use an event as horrific and difficult as war to ask for monetary assistance. A publication with such a lofty view of itself should know better.
E-mail Stephanie Kuenn at smkuenn at gmail dot com.
— graphic by D.P. Barsam (barsam@hotpop.com)
