Salon inching towards profitablilty?

Big news if true from Wired – “Salon’s Balancing Act”.

More at Philly Future on two related Jeff Jarvis posts in which he defines the news editor “of the future” (hint – it’s already here!) and of possible business models to support news reporting.

Relevant quote from Wired article:

…whether there is a subscription requirement or a Site Pass, there is still a wall around Salon’s content — and that means the blogosphere ignores it. Without this persistent cross-linking, relatively few read its words, and as history is being made — or Googled — every day, Salon’s footsteps in cyberspace become fainter and fainter.

Salon’s experience is important to this discussion. Once you lose mind share – people stop talking about you. Salon needs to get it back somehow because the digerati are overlooking what are probably a host of lessons already learned. At least their stories don’t fall into a for pay archive and break permanent URLs.

OJR included Salon in a roundtable on the future of magazines. via Jeff Jarvis.