2005 Annual Report - Online Economics

Several specific Web sites offer good examples of steady growth. CBS Market Watch, for example, used rich media advertising to create impressive revenue growth in the third quarter of 2004, increasing 71% to $19.8 million.¹² In mid-November, Dow Jones & Company bought MarketWatch for approximately $519 million.¹³ And in December 2004, the Washington Post Company announced it was buying the Web magazine Slate.¹⁴

Other old-line online media players have also matured financially. Salon, for example, has now exceeded 90,000 paid subscribers, according to David Talbot, founder and CEO, and has adopted a "Day Pass" ad program where non-paying readers can gain access to the site after watching an ad. Salon, partly because it is a public company that has to entertain buyout efforts, is also rumored as a potential media acquisition.¹⁵

That potential flurry of acquisitions has a few people concerned that the unique, independent feel of news sites like Salon may wane in the wake of a buyout. As Talbot told the Online Journalism Review, "My goal and the goal of the hundreds of other publishers who jumped on Internet publishing in its pioneering days was that we were doing something different and building a new medium that was going to be more freewheeling and more democratic and more spirited than the traditional media business. Unfortunately, most of those visionaries crashed and burned. And Salon is one of the only national independent news sites left…I'm a little bit dismayed that independent news companies have such a hard time on their own."¹⁶