Independent journalism shutting down is really tragic. One of the OG internet publications.

Punditry is a kind of journalism, but far from the most important kind; what people get from Salon today they can get better from a hundred different newsletters.

▲

PaulHoule a day ago | parent [-]

I think the most damning fact about the readers of The New York Times is that they're much more interested in the opinion page (which is just Charlie Blow blowing it out his ass) than they are in the actual reporting which might concern some people you don't know in some place you never heard of that did something that involves a lot of explaining.

▲

tyre a day ago | parent [-]

This is Maureen Dowd erasure. Please respect one of the GOATs of vapid, internally-inconsistent nonsense. She's an absolute legend.

Nor can we forget David Brooks, the moralizing conservative who left his wife for his research assistant 24 years his junior.

David French accusing Mayor Pete of fixing bread prices, Lulu Garcia-Navarro with more glasses than good faith questions, etc.

Say what you will, but the NYT has a deep bench of shenanigans. They truly love the game.

▲

tptacek a day ago | parent | next [-]

David French is a weird person to single out here. Dowd and Brooks don't have any real identities outside of being vapid pundits; French is a former movement conservative (and litigator) who was defenestrated for opposing the rise of Trump. You don't have to like him --- I don't read him --- but he's not really at all like Dowd or Brooks. When you make that comparison, you weaken your point, because it sounds like your real problem with NYT opinion staffing is that it includes right-of-center voices.

If you just wanted people to agree with you, Salon definitely had you covered!

▲

tyre 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You think that based on my view that the NYT Opinion section is a clown car, I therefore want to only read people who agree with me?

The NYT happens to staff people on the intellectual right, which is whatever. It's a core part of who they are. My issue is lack of intellectual rigor.

	▲	PaulHoule an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I can say personally I like David Brooks a lot more than I liked him 10 years ago but he left the Times to go work for The Atlantic.

▲

easterncalculus 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about. David French joined NYT in 2023 and was already an independent. He is not at all a foil and is basically in lockstep with his more left of center cohosts like Jamelle Bouie (who is apparently a fascist, according to the median Bluesky poster). This idea that he’s a right of center contributor to NYT is based entirely on work from before he was there. The only person who was right of center in NYT opinion was Ross Douthat and he’s already gone.

▲

paulpauper a day ago | parent | prev [-]

David brooks was never that heavy on moralizing, imho. He was more of an idealist who saw a vision for society that he conceded could never be realized , but was content with people otherwise acting in accordance with their incentives and preferences.

▲

okeuro49 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Substack is booming.

▲

paulpauper a day ago | parent | next [-]

it's amazing how much long form content there is over the past 5 years, especially the past 2. my reading list is so flooded I have given up

▲

ghaff a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Booming is a relative term. I would have to see how many writers are making a "living wage," a favored term of people in tech circles which generally means a fraction of what they make.

▲

paulpauper a day ago | parent [-]

it's just a blogging platform + newsletter service. There was never an expectation ppl would make a living income from it, except for only the top. But it's like this with almost everything in life.

▲

solyin 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes there was. The monetization was why it wasn't medium.com. Friend of a friend is a substack writer. 50k subscribers that pay $10/month for her insights.

	▲	paulpauper 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I said "except for only the top." With 50k subscribers, presumably this is in the top tier. Similar to medium, the average person who creates a substack blog has to get all the traffic on their own, substakc does not help .

▲

ghaff 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>except for only the top. But it's like this with almost everything in life.

For creatives, however you care to define the term, probably. But there are a lot of professions where fairly run of the mill professionals and even tradespeople still make a pretty decent living even if they're not partners in their organizations or own their own businesses. Of course, you get down to the tier that's doing taxes at Walmart or working in an auto parts store, not so much, although probably still more reliable income than the average Substack writer.

▲

throwaway2037 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I agree. In the last 10 years, a huge number of popular independent journalists and pundits (opinion writers) have moved to Substack. For me, in 2026, it is the OnlyFans of blogging.

▲

linhns a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sadly, it ceased to be that way for a long time.

▲

paulpauper a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

independent journalism is on substack, twitter , tiktok or other social media

▲

vlyan a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Independent journalism

you mean this?

https://www.google.com/search?q=white%20people%20site%3Asalo...

▲

MonkeyClub a day ago | parent [-]

If it sells, you sell it and make money.

In fact, you sell it in all colors and make more money:

https://www.google.com/search?q=black+people+site%3Asalon.co...

It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to sell.

But then someone democratizes the publishing (Substack).

Someone else then mechanizes the producing (LLMs).

And you no longer sell.

Bummer.

▲

vlyan a day ago | parent [-]

the tone is very different, don't you think?

https://www.salon.com/2015/12/22/white_men_must_be_stopped_t...

▲

MonkeyClub 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Slightly, but that was the custom at the time.

	▲	vlyan 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		lol, yeah, exactly. knowing that most of them had already been replaced with diverse individuals prompting an inclusive LLM for equitable $2/hr pleases me immeasurably.

▲

DonHopkins a day ago | parent | prev [-]

All the good news web sites got fucked, and their best stories and documenteries have been taken down, even from the archives, by thin skinned people who don't want them told.

I miss suck.com.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suck.com

Suck.com Net.Moguls Internet Mogul Trading Cards:

https://web.archive.org/web/20181211075708/http://www.suck.c...

Rick Adams, Front:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180802115113im_/http://www.suc...

Rick Adams, Back:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180802143444im_/http://www.suc...

And the hard hitting funny-because-its-true parody from fuckedcompany.com.

Fucked Company published an excellent documentary on the Digital Entertainment Network.

(It's from "Fucked Company", so obviously it's NOT SAFE FOR WORK, but who's at work any more these days?)

Classic Dot-Com Era Fucked Company Brock Pierce DEN (Digital Entertainment Network) Documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W41Ttr73TqU

>Dot Com Boom & Bust - Digital Entertainment Network

>A parody of the founders of Digital Entertainment Network. DEN was "a quintessential example of the excesses and lack of control of the dot-com craze."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Entertainment_Network

I rescued this from the Internet Archive before it got taken down, and it was originally posted on the Fuckedcompany.com website, which went defunct in 2007.

Yes, THAT creepy MAGA Bannon Epstein good buddy pedo crypto shill guy, Brock Pierce, who turns into a banana at 20:30 in this video:

Cryptocurrencies: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6iDZspbRMg&t=19m42s

Brock Pierce's Relationship With Jeffrey Epstein Went Deeper Than Anyone Knew:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/brock-pierces-relationsh...

Fucked Company:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company

Oh no :(, the Internet Archive fucked them:

https://web.archive.org/web/2/http://www.fuckedcompany.com/

>Sorry.

>This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine.

Alternative alternative archive of the front page, only existing in the web.archive.org snapshot of wayback.archive-it.org snapshot of fuckedcompany.com:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240326164342/https://wayback.a...

Then they went from sorta fucked:

https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20091016001955/http://www...

To fucked:

https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20130104195206/http://www...

▲

felixgallo a day ago | parent [-]

hotwired, suck, boing boing, CNET, digg, slashdot, segfault, geocities, flickr...

	▲	ghaff a day ago \| parent [-]
		I still subscribe to flickr but it basically exists on the back of Smugmug and I'm not sure how long that can keep going.