They’re trying something new at Salon, which I think necessitates a pre-emptive post here: rather than keeping some of their best writing walled off behind the Premium (subscriber-only) section, as they’ve been doing for the past year or two, they’ve effectively turned the entire site into a Premium section — but with a way past the wall for people who don’t want to subscribe, which is to click through a multi-part ad. In other words, if you want to look at anything on Salon now, you either have to be a subscriber or you have to click through a multi-part ad once a day.
I’m sure this will annoy many of you who read my cartoon online, and if it does, I encourage you to share those feelings with the appropriate parties, which is to say, anyone but me. I’m not thrilled about this — but, you know, it’s an imperfect world. They’re just trying to stay afloat. And frankly, I never liked having half the site inaccessible to most readers.
But don’t confuse me with Salon. This is their call, I’m just rolling with the punches here. If you have strong feelings about this one way or the other, tell them — not me. I can’t emphasize this enough: I’m not interested. Any email sent to me on this issue will be deleted unread. Seriously. There’s too much going on in the world right now to waste energy on something this inconsequential.
Anyway, look on the positive side — all that Premium material that’s been walled off for the past few years is now accessible, and that’s a Good Thing. Information wants to be free, but it also likes to pay the rent. As I say, it’s an imperfect world.
(Afterthought: if clicking through the ads on Monday is really more than you can bear, you can always wait until Tuesday and read the cartoon at Working For Change.)