Disclosure: The author of this post was previously employed by Salon.com.

Salon.com -- never, ever to be confused with Slate.com -- has brought back former editor in chief/founding father David Talbot as CEO of the online magazine. But in case you think the staff was just feeling nostalgic, Mr. Talbot wasted no time in trumpeting his arrival with news of a complete relaunch of the website as a multimedia platform. The redesign even gets a fancy new name: "American Spring." Let Salon's new CEO tell you all about it:

"Salon is initiating a call for an American spring,” Talbot said, “a national conversation to profoundly renew this country in the same spirit as people in Europe in the streets and throughout the Arab World.”

So what does that actually mean for your daily dose of Alex Pareene? Here's the breakdown on some of "American Spring's" new features (from the PR newswire):

• Recruiting top talent such as Jefferson Morley, formerly of The Washington Post, and Irin Carmon of Jezebel
• Joining forces with media partners such as Alternet, GlobalPost, Grist and Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films;
• Launching a video talk show series with hosts David Talbot and editor in chief Kerry Lauerman, who will interview leading political, business, and cultural personalities and other movers and shakers, about the future of the country. The first interview will be with Bill Moyers, the leading voice of American populism.
• Expanding Salon's cultural selection to showcase illustrated graphic stories and music specials spotlighting the best new and legendary musicians;
• Creating a Salon Studio that will produce unique video programming by artists such as Jennifer Crandall, the Emmy-nominated videographer behind the "onBeing" series
• Holding "Salon To Go" events, beginning with a series of gatherings in barber shops and salons across the country, to discuss what's wrong in America and how to fix it.

With all these changes, the Salon of the future may barely resemble the one we've come to know and love (and worry about). Salon's editor in chief Kerry Lauerman tells us via email:

The editorial staff is incredibly enthusiastic about David's return, and the company's renewed focus. David hired me back in 2000, and has been an informal adviser since I took over here; he's a lodestar. Most importantly, he's helping us find the resources to be as aggressive and ambitious as we've always wanted to be.

Well...okay. So long Salon promises not to threaten the world with the possibility of a Michael Wolff takeover again, we're still fans.

Jim Newell is replacing Alex Pareene, again. Mr. Newell has been hired as Gawker's politics editor, taking over for Mr. Pareene, who left Gawker for Salon in April. Mr. Newell has been working for Wonkette, a D.C. gossip blog that was sold by Gawker Media in 2008. He will not, however, be leaving D.C.

We chatted with Mr. Newell yesterday afternoon about what it will be like to write for a Gawker audience (versus an insidery D.C. audience) and returning to work for a company that sold his last employer.

Observer:  Hi Jim

Jim Newell: Hello!

Observer:  is now still a good time?

Jim Newell: Yes it's fine. I will type with decent grammar and punctuation for this.

Observer:  haha type however you like

Jim Newell: okay then I will type like this.

Observer:  when did you get the offer to move to Gawker and how long did it take you to accept?

Jim Newell: i got an offer last week mid-week and took a couple of days to make up my mind before accepting.

Observer:  was that an easy decision?

Jim Newell: I think, by that time, it was. I had pretty much worked out what I would like to do in the event of an offer. But I've been at Wonkette for a long time, over two and a half years, so moving to anything else seemed strange at first.

(two and a half years is a lot of time for a BLOG)

Observer:  that is a long time!

Jim Newell: Yes, it is 40 blog years.

Observer:   have you picked a last day yet?

Jim Newell: Ha ha not really, even. I think Friday, but maybe sometime next week? I have to finalize this with [Wonkette editor Ken Layne]. But I'm starting Gawker on June 7, one week from Monday. I want to get a few days off in between, so I don't go insane in my first month.

Observer:  do you have to move? are you in D.C. now?

Jim Newell: I'm in DC now and will be staying here. I want to be around the HOT POLITICAL ACTION. No not really, I just have my modest life here.

Observer: will proximity help you blog about politics? Alex Pareene was based in New York, right?

Jim Newell: Pareene was in New York, yes, and did a fine job. And 99% of the stuff I've done for Wonkette hasn't involved leaving the house or even knowing what's outside of it. (Monsters, probably.) But there are events or rallies or happenings that I sometimes like to go to. Maybe I'll want to do more of that stuff in the future, I don't know?

It certainly was nice to have a place to stay on Inauguration weekend.

Observer: I don't read Wonkette usually, but I asked a friend who works on The Hill what it's like. he said "they're very ok with swearing and calling senators anuses...today they called Sen. Nelson a big gay wario." that was you?

Jim Newell: Yup

Observer:  what will change, if anything, about your angle on politics writing for Gawker?

Jim Newell: Well my voice won't change, my views won't change, my sense of humor won't really change. But I will probably be less over-the-top, sometimes. Wonkette is known more for being absurd, surreal, vulgar, and readers enjoy that. Gawker might be a touch more general-audience. I'll have to define my terms better, too, since Gawker isn't strictly a political site where everyone gets every reference.

Observer:  right, i bet the bigger audience (I'm assuming) will be cool for you. but will it be boring to write more general-interest stuff? or at least less challenging if not boring.

Jim Newell: No not at all! I don't think there's anything wrong, or anything that forces you to dumb yourself down, about writing to a wider audience. I've probably gotten into all sorts of bad habits over the last couple of years where I assume too much on behalf of readers and could make my writing better by fixing some of that.

Observer: that's a good point, but i didn't mean dumbing down. I just mean that you've been writing for people who by and large 'get it' and now your posts will be sandwiched between other Gawker content. People aren't going there for political commentary. or are they? is that your goal?

Jim Newell: I think some people are, maybe not the large Internet masses. But I think plenty of people who weren't interested in celebrities or robots or new telephones or whatever went there to read Pareene's stuff, because he had made his political writing a destination on its own terms. And I hope I can do something similar.

Observer:  i think that Adrien Adrian and Maureen are doing a really great job so far (they're funny!), are you excited to come on at a time when there is new blood? do you feel like the site is heading in a new direction now?

Jim Newell: I am! Both of them are very funny. Maureen is a friend of mine, actually, we used to write IvyGate together. As for the site moving in a new direction, I don't really know. There are certainly MORE people there, if you just glance at the masthead. But it's a mix of people who have been around for a couple of years as well as new ones.

Observer:  speaking of, you were with Wonkette when it was sold by Gawker. how does it feel to go back there now? has anyone given you guff for that?

Jim Newell: VINDICATION! No, I don't know. It just feels like I'm going back to a bigger operation that's really expanded its reach in two years. Wonkette's always had a good relationship with Gawker, owned or not. Has anyone given me guff for this? I mean I know what the phrase means, but what do you mean? Are people calling me a sellout?

Observer:  something like that

Jim Newell: Ha ha no. Everyone has been very nice and complimentary.

Observer:  Ken Layne compared Wonkette to The Awl today -- he called them you 'blood brothers/sisters.' does that comparison ring true to you?

Jim Newell: Yes, we literally share the same blood! No I don't know. Both sites are written by ex-Gawker Media people with similar senses of humor, is all.

Now I am going back so it doesn't count.

Observer:  I was thinking that if an Awl editor went back to Gawker there would be guff

Jim Newell: Oh, well I'm not entirely clear what the Awl's relationship to Gawker is, publicly. Do they have a no-link policy or something? I think it would be a bigger deal for them. The equivalent for Wonkette would be for me to go to Politico.

Because we despise them!

Observer:  Right

Jim Newell: The point of this all is I really had no qualms about going back to Gawker and am in fact looking forward to it! You New York people and your battles.

Observer:  we had this item a couple of years ago about Pareene getting burnt out at Gawker -- are you worried about that?

Jim Newell: Eh, I'm not too worried about it right now. Every blogger tends to feel burnt out at some point. Then you realize no one else will ever hire you and you deal with it, ha.

Observer:  Ken said in his post today that you start working around 4pm and that your position is being eliminated -- how did that make you feel?

or was that just to stop the torrent of "Hire Me!" emails

Jim Newell: Ken likes to make fun of me in posts. It's one of the things I will miss most, not even joking.

Observer:  great -- is there anything else i should ask you? i feel like i should ask you a politics question

maybe, what's the funniest email you've ever gotten from a press office about one of your posts?

or do they just totally write you off?

Jim Newell: No major politician would ever write to us! We'd post it. Their staffs have people who monitor these things, though. Things get read.

Observer:  that must feel good -- people are reading you. Gay wario is out there reading.

Jim Newell: I don't have much else to say. I am writing up this post about CNN accidentally having the word "nigga" in one of its segments about an old black lady, it's funny.

Observer: you made a joke about following in Pareene's footsteps. is there anything you want to do differently than him?

Jim Newell: I don't really know. I don't actually blatantly copy him, just his exclamation point usage. I'll just start and see what happens.

For the past several months, Mr. Abrams—the chief legal analyst for NBC News and head of the nascent media strategy firm Abrams Research—has been meeting with various New York-based media reporters, editors, and bloggers about the potential editorial venture.

To date, nobody has signed on for the job.

"I think it’s very possible that I will pursue an on-line Web property that will include some level of blogging of and about the media," Mr. Abrams confirmed to The Observer on Wednesday afternoon. "But we’re still not there yet."

"It is true that I have talked to a number of people about creating what I view as an on-line home for members of the media," he added. "I've had some really informative, instructive conversations with some really interesting people. I’ve learned a lot from them."

Mr. Abrams declined to say whom he had met with. But the Observer has learned the list of writers and editors who've spoken to Mr. Abrams includes Gawker's politics editor Alex Pareene, Advertising Age 'Media Guy' columnist Simon Dumenco, former New York Magazine senior editor Jesse Oxfeld, Portfolio's Mixed Media blogger Jeff Bercovici, and The Observer's own John Koblin.

So far none of the conversations have resulted in a hiring.

"We talked," confirmed Mr. Oxfeld, who's been consulting on the relaunch of Next Book and freelancing since he was laid off from New York in December. "It's a really interesting offer but not what I'm looking for."

"It was flattering to be asked,” said Mr. Pareene. “People are working there that I like and respect."

When Mr. Abrams announced the creation of Abrams Research in November, he told The Observer that 650 people had applied to become "experts" in various areas of the media and that he hoped to one day amass 20,000 names of "TV, online media, and print people" willing to offer, as the company's Web site advertises, "insights, data and personnel never before available to businesses for image enhancement, branding, investigative reporting and the execution of the best media plan."

Which of these things is not like the other? The idea of a firm that advises businesses on media strategy employing working journalists who would continue simultaneously to do journalism attracted its share of criticism from, well, journalists. Writing on New York's Daily Intel blog, Jessica Pressler asked, "Isn't this kind of the dark side?"

So how would the new editorial venture relate to the media strategy firm?

"I am always trying to find vehicles for my community of experts," said Mr. Abrams. "If and when I create an additional web property of and about the media, the editorial side of it will be entirely separate and distinct from Abrams Research, the business."

How would that work?

"I'm not going to get too specific," said Mr. Abrams. "I don't know all the answers yet. I'm certainly trying to think of ways to monetize it so that people who are members of the media and members of the Abrams Research network would be able to blog and write about their area of expertise."

Several candidates and less-sure prospects came away from conversations with Mr. Abrams with the impression that he wants to create something like a "Drudge meets The Huffington Post" site, full of screamer headlines—or maybe a "super-aggregator" covering all aspects of magazines, TV news, and digital media through an explicit "winners and losers" lens.

Sources quoted salaries ranging from $50,000 to $80,000, and responsibilities varied depending on the interviewee from overseeing a team of writers and free Huffington Post-style bloggers, to being part of a two-person blogging and aggregation team, to being a one-man band.

Several people said Mr. Abrams is seeking to maximize "S.E.O." (search engine optimization) and use the editorial product to drive users to become clients of Abrams Research.

"I've had a number of brainstorming sessions," said Mr. Abrams. "I think it is definitely premature at this point to be talking about staffing, salary, anything like that."

Several sources who spoke with Mr. Abrams about the job worried the job would put them off the track of journalism and on the track of P.R.; despite the harsh economic climate for journalism, it was a step they weren't yet quite ready to take. Once you go flack, they say, you never go back.

"I don't entirely understand what the Abrams' consulting company does," said one person. "It's sort of a P.R. firm. I don't want to work for a P.R. firm.”

Mr. Abrams said that his media strategy firm is already "very profitable," and that whether the editorial project will eventually take off will ultimately depend on business considerations.

"It's going to come down to whether it makes financial sense," said Mr. Abrams.

Mr. Pareene is going part-time for Gawker, which means he'll be working a few days out of the week for the Web site and the rest of the time working on "other projects," he sad.

Last week, Mr. Pareene told us that he wasn't too pleased with the new mandatory weekend shifts for Gawker writers, and that he was ready to quit. He said he was getting sick of the new site redesign ("Which I'm not a huge fan of") as well, and that he'd had enough.

"It's something that’s been bubbling up for a while," he told Media Mob.

Gabriel Snyder, Gawker's new Managing Editor, apparently was able to talk him off the ledge.

"He came to me and said he was burnt out and I tried to convince him to stay," said Mr. Snyder. "We talked about him going to a part time thing in the new year and we're still working on the details."

In other Gawker Media news, two employees have been laid off from the tech side, and one of those jobs will apparently be outsourced to a person in Budapest —something Nick Denton warned us that he'd be doing about a month ago.

Gawker.com's managing editor Gabriel Snyder wrote in a note to his staff that each writer would be required to edit the Web site on Saturdays and Sundays , on a rotational basis. "This person will be responsible for posting beginning at 10am and doing at least six posts on Saturday and then at least four on Sunday, also starting at 10am," he wrote. "These are both designed to be half-day posting loads, but the news editor will be responsible for keeping on top of news as it breaks throughout the day, so don't plan on wandering too far away from your computer. As a comp day, you will get the Friday preceding your shift off."

In addition, for those writers who aren't required to edit the Web site that weekend, they are expected to contribute three posts in advance that can be rolled out on Saturdays and Sundays.

The news hasn't gone over well at Gawker.

"I was bitching about it," said Alex Pareene, one of Gawker's day editors. "Everyone is upset about it."

Starting in January, the pay-per-pageview model used to compensate each Gawker writer will be supsended, according to Mr. Pareene. Writers will rely on a regular salary, so they won't be able to benefit financially by driving in big traffic numbers during their working weekends.

"They just laid off Sheila," he said, referring to Sheila McClear, who was let go earlier this month. (Ms. McClear contributes to The Observer as well.) "If you want a 24 hour Gawker running, set aside the resources to keep it running for 24 hours."

Gawker has been in need of a new weekend editor ever since Ian Spiegelman left. The former Page Sixer apparently wasn't too pleased with the upcoming page view-pay model freeze.

Nick Denton, for his part, said that the weekend plan is "nothing new," and that in the first half of the year, while he was managing editor, he would regularly contribute during weekends, and so would his staff.

Mr. Denton said he'd also be on the rotation for Gawker's flagship site, and said he thinks it "sucks."

On Monday, Dec. 3, nightlife editor Josh Stein told The Media Mob, he'll do the same.

"The reasons I'm quitting are kind of personal," he told Media Mob on Sunday night. "It has nothing to do with the job. I'm actually really happy with the job."

He said he told Noah Robischon, who is the managing editor of several sites including Gawker that are part of the Gawker Media Group, on Friday that he planned to quit at the end of the month. He said he hasn't spoken to Gawker media founder and owner Nick Denton about it.

When asked if the Sicha-Gould announcement had anything to do with his timing, he said "Yeah, certainly."

"I really, really enjoy working with Choire," he said. "He taught me a lot, and Emily as well. They taught me a lot about blogging, which I wasn't very good at when I started."

He'll be spending the month of January in London with a "lady" he said he would "make a go of it" with. When he returns, he said he'll hope to pick up a career in freelancing. He said he's currently working on pieces for Page Six Magazine and Out, and that he has "some major" work in the pipeline that he couldn't discuss.

Maggie Shnayerson, who started on Sept. 24, is now the longest-serving editor at Gawker. She'll be working with Alex Pareene and reporter Sheila McClear.

“I think that YouTube is great, because if you do something like ‘Dick in a Box,’ someone in Pakistan can see it,” said Mr. Michaels in a phone interview.

He was referring to the now-ubiquitous skit by SNL cast member Andy Samberg and guest host Justin Timberlake in which the duo sang about giving your girlfriend the ultimate gift: namely, your dick in a box.

Recently, Messrs. Timberlake and Samberg sang “Dick in a Box” to hordes of ecstatic fans in a sold-out Madison Square Garden. But it’s not hard to imagine a teenager in Islamabad cracking up his friends with those same irresistible lyrics: “One, cut a hole in the box …. ”

“YouTube has been great for us,” Mr. Michaels reiterated.

Perhaps no other network show has gotten more out of the free video-sharing Web site than Saturday Night Live. Indeed, at the very moment the long-running program seems to be emerging from a years-long slump, producing sketches—not just lip-synch bloopers—that people actually want to share, discuss, and watch again and again, YouTube has been there, doing more to re-establish the show’s cultural relevance than any honcho at NBC.

So why, one might ask, would NBC pull the plug?

Just as Saturday Night Live is earning back its credibility and fans, NBC has taken the videos down. NBC’s legal department, under the helm of Rick Cotton, patrols YouTube for unauthorized NBC content. Once found, the material is promptly removed. Consequently, the network is discouraging the very buzz that was firming up the show’s grip on the American zeitgeist.

The action has left Saturday Night Live with a diminished online presence. NBC has a sanctioned YouTube page to promote clips of their choosing from SNL, but it is far from exhaustive. Toward the end of March, executives at NBC Universal announced that they were teaming up with the News Corporation to create a new Web venture that would allow executives at the two media behemoths to distribute their own copyrighted shows across some of the Web’s most heavily trafficked sites, including AOL, Yahoo, MSN and MySpace—that is, more or less everywhere except on the Google-owned YouTube. The venture is expected to launch later this summer.

Media watchers dubbed the new unnamed Web venture the “YouTube killer.”

So what does that bode for the future relevance of Saturday Night Live?

“I think it should be clear, I don’t quite understand what NBC is doing with Fox,” said Mr. Michaels. “It sounds—” Mr. Michaels paused. “Cool. But it all seems like it’s still shaking out.”

A NBC spokesperson said that the new venture should benefit Saturday Night Live by making more of the show’s content more readily available on a wider variety of sites—all under the legal imprimatur of the show’s parent company.

Mr. Michaels went on to explain that although he is concerned about the future relationship between his show and YouTube, he has faith that NBC’s evolving digital strategy will ultimately protect Saturday Night Live. He said he hopes that viewers will continue to see SNL’s best content on a variety of media platforms, including the Internet, iTunes and cell phones.

“I think it’s simple for me,” said Mr. Michaels. “If the work is good, I want the most number of people to see it—period. Anything that leads to that would be my objective.”

“The creators obviously want the biggest possible audience,” added Mr. Michaels. “And lawyers have another agenda.”

FORGET "DICK IN A BOX" FOR A MOMENT. What about that hallmark of Saturday Night Live’s influence—the political sketch? As the country enters another frenzied Presidential race, it seems that NBC might be hindering SNL’s momentum on the Internet at the exact moment when the country is primed for a classic bit of SNL satire.

This past October, Alex Pareene, the editor of the heavily trafficked political blog Wonkette, embedded a short SNL clip featuring Darrell Hammond as Brit Hume interviewing Will Forte as President Bush. A few hours later, Mr. Pareene received an e-mail from YouTube.

“This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by NBC Universal claiming that this material is infringing,” read the e-mail. “In order to avoid future strikes against your account, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights.”

Likewise, in January, the Raw Story, an on-line news site, embedded a video from YouTube of an SNL skit featuring Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton. Shortly thereafter, NBC lawyers asked YouTube to take down the clip.

In January, Rachel Sklar, the editor of the Huffington Post’s “Eat the Press” media section, linked to an unauthorized YouTube clip of Saturday Night Live host Jake Gyllenhaal, in drag, belting out a song from Dreamgirls. By the next day, NBC had prodded YouTube into yanking the clip. Henceforth, instead of seeing what Ms. Sklar described as a “tour-de-force” performance, visitors to “Eat the Press” were redirected to a terse warning: “This video is no longer available.”

Theoretically, any Internet user on the prowl for SNL content should be able to turn to the NBC-sanctioned YouTube channel. After each new episode, NBC uploads several authorized SNL clips onto the channel, alongside promotions for other programming such as The Office and Heroes. At the same time, NBC also posts SNL content on the show’s official NBC Web site, complete with a video-sharing device called the “Control Booth” and a library of digital clips from current and past seasons.

So what’s the problem?

To watch SNL content on the NBC Web site, you first have to sit through (admittedly brief) commercials. More frustrating is the lack of an adequate search function on the “Control Booth,” which makes finding a specific skit a labor-intensive process. The NBC YouTube channel, on the other hand, works perfectly—except that NBC often makes inexplicable decisions about what gets uploaded. Some of the best skits never make it onto the site.

The situation is even grimmer for music bloggers hoping to spread around clips of bands performing on SNL. In February, band-of-the-moment Arcade Fire churned out a gripping set on the SNL stage. The next day, the music blog Stereogum reported that front man Win Butler had performed with a Haitian proverb taped to his guitar, which translated to “An empty sack doesn’t stand up.” Existential metaphors aside, it seemed like a perfect summation of NBC’s evolving policy towards YouTube. Further down in the post, Stereogum linked to a couple of YouTube clips of the performance, in which Mr. Butler smashed said guitar. Days later, both clips had been rendered useless.

How do Saturday Night Live and NBC decide which skits get officially posted, and where?

Mr. Michaels says that he has a hand in the process, which typically takes place at the end of each show. Some of those decisions, according to Mr. Michaels, are dictated by logistics (short clips for cell phones), others by the complicated thicket of guilds, and unions, and copyright issues.

“Very often, music in a sketch is not clearable,” said Mr. Michaels. “Very often, a sketch that I would love to put up there I can’t, because you’d have to clear it with the publisher.”

Music aside, what about SNL’s political satire?

Eric Schmeltzer, a New York–based independent political correspondent who formerly served as the press secretary for Howard Dean, suggests that NBC executives might have been wearing their bad-idea jeans when they decided to sic their legal department on YouTube.

“Political clips are some of the most-watched on YouTube—besides some of the nonsense that teenagers will put up of them dancing on their beds and stuff like that,” said Mr. Schmeltzer. “If they have a good political skit that skewers George W. Bush, if you put that on YouTube and allow people to grab it and post it, you could potentially be seen the next day by two or three million people. I just can’t understand why they wouldn’t want that to happen.”

Mattis Goldman, a Democratic political consultant, points out that SNL’s political satire had a huge impact on the 2000 Presidential elections, long before the advent of YouTube. (Remember the lockbox?) The question for Mr. Goldman is whether, in the intervening years, NBC has sufficiently kept up with the changing media landscape.

“In 2000, Saturday Night Live’s satire of what happened in the campaign became the conventional wisdom for what was going on in the campaign,” said Mr. Goldman. “But the creative idea alone is not enough these days: You have to have a Web-based outlet where people are going to be able to view it.”

Is it a smart strategy for NBC to crack down on unauthorized SNL clips on YouTube?

“That’s a decision they have to make,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “If pieces cannot be used, they’ll have less political impact. But that’s not what NBC is interested in. They’re interested in money. The political discourse may be poorer for their decision, but their decision makes perfect sense for them, because they’re a profit-making organization.”

Mr. Michaels says that this fall, as always, Saturday Night Live will spoof the upcoming Presidential debates. But whether those skits will end up on YouTube, Mr. Michaels can’t say at this point.

“With the new Fox thing,” said Mr. Michaels, “I think we’re all just waiting, you know?”