Ultra Left-Wing Media Outlet Salon Shuts Down After 31 Years

Regardless of what people might think happened during the midterm elections (there’s some real weird post-election numbers coming out of certain states right now), wokeness is not an effective selling point for the political left.  James Talarico had to renounce his insane woke statements from the Biden era to get any kind of traction in Texas.  Abdul El-Sayed had to begrudgingly claim that he no longer supports the Muslim Brotherhood.  Clearly, someone sent out a memo to turn down the volume on the Cultural Marxism.  

The reason is obvious – Get Woke, Go Broke.  And nowhere is this rule more apparent than the online media industry.  In the case of left-wing web media, the result has been a well deserved bloodbath.   

Ultra left-wing news outlet Salon launched in San Francisco in 1995 in the early days of the internet, proving yet again that nothing good has come out of the Bay Area for at least a century.  Their stated ideological mission was to provide an “unapologetically progressive” and liberal “counterweight” to mainstream, corporate media.  A hilarious notion given that the media was already brutally left-wing in the 1990s, but hey, Salon wanted to push that line even harder.   

From its inception, the publication intentionally rejected the traditional journalistic ideal of “objective neutrality,” which the founders believed resulted in bland and market-tested commentary.  In other words, they wanted the news to also be entertainment, and they were willing to sacrifice things like facts and balance in order to make that happen.  

It shows.  Salon became infamous rather than famous for their grotesque headlines, which included stories like:

My Abortion Made Me Happy: The Story That Started The #shoutyourabortion Movement

White Guys Are Killing Us: Toxic, Cowardly Masculinity, Our Unhealable National Illness  

Let’s Hope The Boston Marathon Bomber Is A White American    

Human-On Dolphin Sex Is Not Really That Weird    

I’m A Pedophile, Not A Monster (a story Salon eventually erased) 

Salon was also well known for crafting fraudulent hatchet job articles against conservative politicians.  In 2022, the outlet finally corrected a year-old headline after falsely accusing Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of signing a bill that forced Florida students and professors to register their political views with the state.  The article misrepresented an anonymous and voluntary state survey.  

The company was one of the pioneers of militant woke activism posing as “journalism.”  However, this lack of integrity has finally caught up with them.  Salon announced this week that they are shutting down after 31 years in operation.  The announcement was posted to X, and then Salon promptly shut off replies.

Today, after 31 years, we are saddened to announce that Salon is ceasing publication. It has been an extraordinary privilege. https://t.co/a103i0aEKi https://t.co/GTFbVqAzvz

— Salon (@Salon) November 5, 2026

“It’s difficult to find the right words for the end of something that has meant so much to so many people,” a letter titled “Goodbye From Salon” reads. “Salon was never just a website. It was an idea about what journalism could be, born at a moment when the internet was still a largely unexplored frontier.”

“…The business realities of independent digital journalism have changed profoundly over the years. After careful consideration, we have reached the difficult decision that our publishing model is no longer sustainable. We know this news will be deeply disappointing to many of you, and we share that sadness.”

Many critics previously considered Salon a cockroach that would never die.  If the pro-pedo articles didn’t kill them, what possibly could?  Theories abound on what finally did them in.  Some suggest that the defunding of USAID is the key to the downfall of numerous progressive operations, and that Salon is one of them.  The idea that the company was able to self-sustain for this long without government funding is hard to believe. 

There was also the decline of venture capital and ESG lending in the early 2020s, which crushed a number of left-wing media sites.  Proving that woke companies cannot survive on legitimate profits, they must have outside help to stay afloat.  It’s possible Salon was one of the final holdouts from the ESG bonanza.

In any case, good riddance to bad rubbish.