Trailblazing online news publication Salon is shutting down after 31 years, according to a Thursday announcement.
The site’s approach to digital journalism influenced countless other digital publications and served as a launching pad for many well-known journalists.
“The business realities of independent digital journalism have changed profoundly over the years,” Salon said in its announcement, adding that its publishing model is “no longer sustainable.”
“Thirty-one years is a remarkable run, but what matters most is what happened during those years: the journalism, the ideas, the voices, the conversations and the community that grew around them,” Salon added. “Salon helped demonstrate what digital journalism could be and could become. We hope that legacy will continue to matter long after today.”
It’s unclear how many staffers will be impacted, but the site’s LinkedIn page says it has up to 50 employees.
Several renowned journalists have worked for the news site, including CNN’s Jake Tapper, NBC News’ Steve Kornacki, The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald and New York Magazine’s Rebecca Traister, and former Salon editors-in-chief David Talbot, who is also the founder, and Joan Walsh.
Salon, which debuted on Nov. 20, 1995, notably decided at one point to lean more toward original reporting than aggregation, increasing viewership.
In a 10th anniversary post, author and journalist Gary Kamiya described Salon as starting as a “little literary-leaning magazine,” having been through multiple rounds of layoffs and hiring surges, and having both “won awards and been slapped with subpoenas” and being “denounced on the floor of Congress and praised by the president of the United States.”
Salon even had an online dating platform.
The site is one of countless outlets that have shuttered or experienced mass layoffs in an evolving media landscape. In recent months, for example, BET removed all articles from its site, People magazine laid off nearly 200 people, and the BBC said it plans to cut around 2,000 jobs.