Salon Ceases Publication After 31 Years as Digital News Pioneer Closes

Salon, one of the early internet's most influential news sites, announced on Thursday, Nov. 5 that it is ceasing publication after 31 years. The announcement came in a farewell letter titled "Goodbye from Salon" posted on the site.

"The business realities of independent digital journalism have changed profoundly over the years," the letter said. "After careful consideration, we have reached the difficult decision that our publishing model is no longer sustainable." The letter said the site's run mattered for the journalism, the ideas and the community that grew around it. It did not say what will happen to the site's archive of three decades of work. Some staff reported they had lost their jobs, according to the Associated Press report. The site's outgoing editor-in-chief is Joseph Neese, who had been with Salon since 2017, according to TheWrap.

A site born on the early web

Salon was launched on Nov. 20, 1995 in San Francisco by a small group of journalists led by David Talbot, a former arts and features editor at the San Francisco Examiner. It began in the mid-1990s, barely three years after the web itself went mainstream, and at first used the address salon1999.com because salon.com was owned by a hair salon owner in Texas, according to reports on the closure.

The site built its name on politics, culture, criticism and essays, and helped show what online-only journalism could be. Its alumni include CNN anchor Jake Tapper, who covered the White House for the site, and journalist Rebecca Traister, according to Mediaweek.

Years of cuts before the end

The closure followed years of downsizing in the Salon newsroom. In November 2023, the privately held media company Find.co acquired Salon from its previous owners, according to reports on the sale. The shutdown also lands in a hard year for media jobs across the industry, with entertainment and media layoffs up sharply in 2025 amid consolidation, cost cutting and changes driven by artificial intelligence, according to TheWrap.

Salon gave no details in its farewell on what the closure means for staff, subscribers or the archive. For readers who grew up with the early web, the name was part of the first wave of digital publishing, and Thursday's letter closes that chapter.