Open Letter to Salon.com

I wrote this to Salon a week ago, I’m posting it today in response to an entry made about a Garrison Keillor piece in Salon.

Walter Thompson
Manager, Salon Premium

Dear Mr. Thompson:

I’m sorry to say I won’t be renewing my Salon subscription in January.

I used to love Salon, but it has become the digital equivalent of the Jerry Springer Show: all opinion, all the time, very little of it informed. The editorial standard now seems to be how many letters a given piece will generate. And I have to tell you, every time I read the letters section I want to take a shower afterward. I don’t know what it takes to exclude a letter from your pages, short of a death threat, but your “Editor’s Choice” designation is merely an abdication of editorial responsibility.

If it was possible to support just the AP feed, War Room, Heather Havrilesky, Joe Conason, Patrick Smith, and maybe one or two others like them, I would. I can’t justify underwriting the self-indulgent auto-eroticism of Garrison Keillor; the always-angry, always self-absorbed Debra J. Dickerson (who appears to be the love child of Ayelet Waldman and Anne Lamott), and Cary Tennis, who is quite possibly the last person on Earth from whom I’d seek advice.

I’m troubled that you’ve turned Salon into a blogger collective, in which opinion pieces, rather than reporting, now dominate the pages (including “news” stories in which the news is merely the hook upon which the writer hangs his or her disquisition). I’m troubled that so much of the content seems designed to pump up the volume on the letters page, rather than inform readers or unpack a complex issue. I’m troubled that so many pieces spotlight the trivial difficulties of relatively privileged people.

I’ve been watching Salon drift toward the precipice all year, and if it isn’t there yet, I don’t want to watch it slide over the edge.

Best Wishes,

Bob Howe