Amid a media merger whirlwind at the end of his tenure (AOL + HuffPo! Daily Beast + Newsweek!), Mr. Gingras was looking for a buyer for the early adopter online magazine (est. 1995), but took it off the market after talks with Michael Wolff-founded news aggregator Newser disintegrated. With Ms. Jeffers at the helm, Mr. Talbot will stay on in an advisory role.

"Our goal is not only to continue publishing some of the best news and entertainment journalism on the Web, but to reemerge as a technological leader of online media by experimenting with emerging platforms, new data sets and new ways of interacting with stories," communications director Liam O'Donoghue wrote.

The company has also grabbed Wenner Media's Matthew Sussberg to serve as vice president of Salon's advertising.

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.

Salon.com.

First revenues determined that it was necessary to reduce costs at the

on-line magazine. Then founder and editor-in-chief David Talbot used

numbers--web usage--to target which members of the editorial staff should go. The numbers, the equivalent of television ratings, allowed Mr. Talbot to pinpoint 13 employees, including seven editors and writers, who did not generate enough web "hits" to justify keeping them on in the face of dwindling funds.

The seven, as well as other Salon.com employees, learned the bad news on June 7. Among the newly unemployed was Mr. Talbot's wife,

Camile Peri, the editor who started Salon's "Mothers Who Think" section; travel editor Don George; book editor Craig Seligman; book writer Craig Offman; media writer Sean Elder; associate business editor Lydia Lee and Kate Moses, an editor who had worked with Ms. Peri. In addition movie reviewer Charles Taylor, who had been a contract writer,was dropped.

In all, the layoffs reduced the 44-person editorial staff by 15 percent. "It was a belt-tightening that was necessary after our analysts suggested that our revenues would be less than we anticipated," Mr. Talbot told The Observer . "It was really painful," he said of having to choose who had to go. "When it came time to do this, it was literally like cutting into my own flesh."

Two weeks ago, on May 25, analysts at the investment bank that handled

Salon.com's public offering in June 1999 cut its estimates of how much money the web site would bring in by 30 percent, forcing Mr. Talbot to find ways to cut his operating budget. Besides pink-slipping the 13 employees, he cut 20 percent from the freelance budget and reduced his advertising sales and marketing costs. Also let go were five people on the business side and a person who worked in the art department.

Painful as it may have been for Mr. Talbot to fire his staff, he did it by the numbers, targeting the writers and sites with the least traffic. "The web content business is a draconian world," Mr. Talbot said. "My daunting task has always been to keep books and intellectual content, while also being aware that sex and celebrity is a huge traffic generator," he said. "Balancing the two is tough."

"Obviously there are are certain areas that are expendable because they didn't get hit counts," Mr. Offman, the book writer, said, noting that typically his stories were accessed 3,000 or 4,000 times the first day after they were published, doubling when one of his stories was picked up elsewhere, such as the New York Post 's Page Six.

"With books, from a purely supply and demand, Economics 101-perspective, we were overinvested with three editorial people, given the kind of circulation we were getting," Mr. Talbot said. "I had continued to spare books, but in the end, again, you have to face blunt realities." Mr. George's travel section will be shut down now that he has been fired. Mr. Talbot said that the section attracted the least traffic on Salon.com. "Even though I think it has set the standard for literary travel writing on the Web, it wasn't what readers were using our site for," Mr. Talbot said. "They want to know where's the cheapest flight I can get." "It's more like television," Mr. Elder, the fired media columnist, said of writing for the Web. "If people don't watch your show, they can it." For an editor who had just been fired without notice, Mr. Seligman was in pretty good spirits. "I'm not happy, but it's nothing personal." Nor was he upset that he hadn't been given any notice that he would be out of a job. "I have complete and utter trust in David," Mr. Seligman said. "I hate to sound like a Moonie, but if it was done this way, I am sure it was done for a reason. Obviously the company is suffering."

It had been clear for some time that Salon.com needed to cut its operating budget. Revenues were not meeting expectations; on May 25, investment bank W.R. Hambrecht said the content site would bring in $14.3 during its 2001 fiscal year, rather than the $20.5 million that had been previously projected. In fiscal year 2000, which ended on March 31, Salon.com lost $18.3

million on revenues of $8 million. Since its I.P.O. in June 1999, Salon.com stock has slumped 79 percent to $2.13 a share.

"The only conclusion you can reach," said one Salon.com staffer reacting to the firings, "is that it's an effort to raise the stock price." Mr. Talbot didn't go so far, only saying, "In the end, you have to face blunt realities."

That's chump change in dot-com land, really, but other editors and writers around town took notice because Mr. Kansas wasn't some downtown digerati kid they didn't understand. Prior to joining TheStreet.com, Mr. Kansas was the senior financial markets reporter for The Wall Street Journal . Print business reporters and editors muttered to each other about that number: $9 million. That's a private sector payday. Mr. Kansas is a financial markets journalist.

Then came Salon.com in June 1999. David Talbot, who, prior to founding Salon.com in 1995 had been the arts and features editor of the San Francisco Examiner , took the Web site public in a lackluster initial public offering, and shazam!–he had $4 million in his brokerage account.

But those easy-money days are over. At current prices, Mr. Kansas' stock and options are worth $1.6 million, and Mr. Talbot's stake is worth a hair over $1 million. Not bad, but, of course, back in the old-media world, Dave Eggers just sold the paperback rights to his debut novel for $1.4 million.

After a wrenching week in the stock market, if reasons remain for editors and writers to get together and create on-line publications, the I.P.O. jackpot does not appear to be one of them. Sure, the Nasdaq perked up on Monday and Tuesday, but the clear losers of the Great Internet Shake-Up of April 2000 are those companies lumped into the category of "content."

The numbers are staggering. There's Salon.com, which, after closing at $10 a share in June, is now trading at around $2.50. In May 1999, a share of TheStreet.com finished its first day of trading at $60, but is now worth just about $7. And CBS Marketwatch, which hit $117 on its I.P.O. day, is now trading at less than $17. Those aren't the only ones: While the Bloomberg index of Internet companies is down 38 percent since the first of the year, the content companies it includes have lost 50 percent.

After Black Friday, April 14, Mr. Talbot still believes in his on-line publication Salon . It's just not a stock thing anymore.

"I don't have any visions of stratospheric stock prices," Mr. Talbot told Off the Record a couple of days after Black Friday. "Salon's business plan is a traditional one: We sell content and we sell advertising. We're not a B2B company or any other flavor of the month."

And as for selling a writing site as a hot Internet I.P.O., Mr. Talbot figures that's over. "I think it would be virtually impossible for a content company like ours to go public this year."

And Mr. Kansas said he's not having any trouble attracting talent away from old-line newspapers, even with TheStreet.com shares slumping. "I think journalists are attracted to the chance to have an impact," he said. "The chance to build stuff."

Eventually, money will be made by pumping out words and pictures for the Net, just as money has long been made by putting words and pictures on paper. Kurt Andersen and his partner Michael Hirschorn, co-founders of Powerful Media, a media and entertainment news Web site, stand to make much more money running their new enterprise, which meticulously tracks book deals and the hiring and firing of studio executives, than they ever would have made as editors at New York or Spin magazine.

Still, after April 14, you can't help but think that some of that dot-com mystique is gone. Hiring a bunch of writers and editors to produce a Web site is suddenly no longer the best way to get rich quick. And the business of filling computer screens with stuff people want to look at doesn't seem all that different from the business of filling movie screens, TV screens or newspaper pages.

Jerry Colonna, a managing partner at Flatiron Partners, the venture capital firm that put up the money for Powerful Media, as well as for the magazine and Web site The Industry Standard and for TheStreet.com, said he's confident his on-line media bets will pay off. "I structure my investments so that I can make money even if these companies don't get an Internet premium," Mr. Colonna said.

Breaking into venture capital jargon for measuring how many times an initial investment is multiplied, he added, "Instead of getting 15 times return, we'll get three times our investment. Well, that's not such a bad deal."

Massaging stock prices upwards, or at least attempting to, will no doubt continue to occupy new-media executives. Scott Kurnit, the chief executive of About.com, which hit its all-time high of $105.81 on March 14 before sinking below $30 this month, was confident that his company's stock would pick back up.

"I'll have to go to investors and say, Now that the dust has settled, we're different," Mr. Kurnit said.

He argued that his company, which gives people a cut of the site's ad revenue in exchange for running a home page dedicated to a specific topic like "cheese appetizers," didn't deserve the content label. "I don't like to be included in the content group because it's a misnomer; it means a lack of efficiency and not using the medium effectively. There are content companies and modified-content companies."

Louis Kanganis, chief financial officer of Nerve.com, said he was different, too. "I think what is going to start happening is that people are going to start separating new economy companies by the strength of their business plans," he said. Mr. Kanganis wouldn't rule out an I.P.O. for his company, which, in addition to its sex-theme Web site, now publishes a magazine and hosts a personals site, although he said Nerve might have to take the company into German rather than American markets.

Larry Kramer, chief executive of CBS Marketwatch, called the fall of Internet stocks "bittersweet." With the vision of blockbuster I.P.O.'s fading for those not yet in the on-line financial news game, he predicted venture capital funding would begin to dry up for his competitors. "I want to stop competing against people who are just throwing away money," Mr. Kramer said. "The dark side is that a lot of employees are in the sobering position of being underwater." In other words, all those journalists who signed on for the stock options are out of the money.

Of Mr. Kramer's own stock, which was worth $7.8 million on I.P.O. day and now is worth about $1 million, he said, "It wasn't real money, it was money to lose."

Sic transit gloria mundi.com.

Former Daily News editor in chief Debby Krenek bade farewell to her staff on April 13 at a party at the Water Club. About 100 people showed up, including ghosts of the Daily News past, including Jim Willse, editor and publisher when Robert Maxwell owned the paper and before Mortimer Zuckerman bought it in 1993; former star mob-world reporter Jerry Capeci, now a spokesman for the John Jay College of Criminal Justice; and former business editor Ann Podd, now a spot news editor at The Wall Street Journal.

"It's a pleasant group of people," said a Daily News staff member who attended. "It's sort of like a family that only gets together for a wake and says, 'Gee, we need to get together more often.'"

Ms. Krenek had stopped coming into the offices around the end of March. Her office remains dark as her successor Ed Kosner prepares to take the helm at the tabloid.

Perhaps more Daily News editors and reporters would have shown up if they hadn't had to pay $30 to get in. The gritty tabloid tends not to splurge for staff get-togethers; people who wanted to send off Mr. Capeci when he left the paper last October had to chip in for drinks and hors d'oeuvres, too. Also, perhaps they wouldn't have had to spend $30 if Mr. Zuckerman had shown up, but the paper's owner skipped the farewell ball for his "princess," as did Ms. Krenek's replacement, Mr. Kosner, who is close to wrapping up his six-week study of the paper before he starts making his mark at the News .

"I would say it was a bon voyage to somebody who is certainly going to be a big part of the news world," said a staff member who attended Ms. Krenek's party.

Oprah Winfrey's new 318-page magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine , is a very reasonable $2.95. After all, Time , Newsweek and New York are each $3.50. Plus, each issue of O includes a "gift from O " behind page 270: five "beautiful bookmarks" that can be cut out. But if you want to consider what you'll get, here it is:

"This Month's Mission," an activity for Ms. Winfrey's readers (page 20), is to start a "courage journal." First, buy a notebook. Then, "on the first page, write down every brave, strong, surprising thing you've ever done." Does starting a courage journal count?

For those who need inspiration, the Alaskan folk-singer Jewel shares what she writes in her own journal (page 96). In July 1999, she wrote, "My childhood was molded by the beauty of nature as well as the knowledge of how much people suffer. Even small indignities–dealing with stuff from petty bosses just to get a minimum-wage paycheck, answering intimate questions in the welfare offices (like whether you have a boyfriend who gives you money) just so you can get your children fed in the richest country in the world–they are the kinds of things that inspired my songwriting at 16. Does anyone believe in love?"

Of course, you don't need to buy a notebook to get started. In a feature "Something to Think About" (page 100), you are given space to write down your thoughts right then and there.

"Find a quiet spot to consider the questions below, then use the space to write down your thoughts." Questions include, "Am I satisfied with the life am living?" (four lines are provided for an answer); "How would I change my life if I had only one year to live? One month? One day?" (five lines); and "What's my heart's deepest desire?" (five lines).

Other activities include the "everyday pleasures" recommended by Katrina Kenison (beginning page 108): "Let your nose lead the way on a sensory walk. Take a friend with you and see what good sniffers you are. Can you tell which neighbor is barbecuing?" Also, "Look around the room you are in right now. What do you see that pleases your eyes and soothes the spirit?"

Whoa! I just saw Oprah's placid and serene gaze meeting mine!

Correction

The picture of Angelina Jolie and James Haven that ran in the April 17 edition of this column was published with an incorrect credit line attributing it to Dave Allocca of DMI. As was noted in the text, Gilles Bensimon, the creative director of Elle , was the photographer who captured the siblings smooching. Off the Record regrets the error.

The initial public offering of the Internet magazine company had long been derided by other journalists out of some combination of jealousy and professional propriety–as if a sudden payday just wasn't supposed to be a part of a journalist doing the job. Certainly not in something as, well, as self-promoting and San Francisco as Salon .

But Salon.com had to go public. That's what on-line companies do in San Francisco.

These days, though Salon describes itself as a continuously updated "network of 10 subject-specific, demographically targeted Web sites," it's at its heart still an electronic alternative weekly, just like … certain other papers. Only now it's worth $107 million. Its editor and chairman, David Talbot, may one day be rich enough to buy that apartment in North Beach and that house in the wine country that he mused about to Wired last January. "I think that most people think that Nasdaq has to be some sort of vehicle for karma," said Joey Anuff, editor in chief of Suck.com . "That some day they," meaning the instant "dot-com" winners, "will get their just desserts." Wired 's failed I.P.O. back in 1996 reinforced the idea that editorial doesn't go public.

But Mr. Talbot's 4 percent (valued at $4 million after the I.P.O.) is not going to be worth much compared to James Cramer's 14 percent take from TheStreet.com , which was worth $95 million the day that Salon was offered. And the market valuation of the company is puny compared to other Silicon Valley offerings. "It's sort of relative," said Mr. Anuff. "Employee No. 200 at Yahoo is probably never going to be jealous of Employee No. 1 at Salon ."

Still, journalists have been getting rich for some time in San Francisco. Big "portals" like Excite and Yahoo Inc., which are worth far more than Salon would ever be, hired ex-editors to help put together their sites.

People like Todd Lappin, a former Wired editor who saw that I.P.O. go down, left after it was sold to Condé Nast and now is setting himself up as "editorial consultant" to Guru.com, which is a site that's being launched to help freelancers. "From the journalist's point of view," he said, "you think, I've spent so much time reporting on it, why not try it out?" And, he said, "there's lot of local pride out here," for Salon , and it has done one thing that many on the Internet have been trying to do fervently: build a brand.

"In San Francisco," said one West Coast Salon source, "you can't walk two blocks without bumping into a multimillionaire … People doing a lot less important stuff than us, making a whole lot more money."

"Talbot has a lot of ideas and every third one works," said one person who dealt with him. The place moved quickly–sometimes too quickly. People felt left behind. Areas were added for buzz and for sponsorships. The site bloated. The offices became crowded. Lines of authority became blurred. Mr. Talbot himself couldn't micromanage by charm anymore.

Instead, Mr. Talbot has been out selling the site, though often inaccurately when it came to fluffing its financials. His chief competitor, Slate editor Michael Kinsley, took a whack at him recently. "It's insane that all these money losing organizations are going for these huge valuations," he said, reflecting what is most often said in the press about Salon 's I.P.O. But don't get the idea that Mr. Kinsley is bereft in the Web economy: Slate employees get Microsoft Corporation stock. After 13 years at Microsoft and one year at Slate , the site's managing editor retired at 40, and its first program manager retired at 30 after eight years at Microsoft.

Somehow, Salon built a brand. Lacking in enough advertising or electronic commerce revenue to pay for its overhead, or some other futuristic revenue gimmick, "one of its big successes is recognizing and being a beneficiary of the fact that kind of splash-trash journalism makes incredibly good business," said Mr. Anuff. Which is how their exposing Representative Henry Hyde helped them go public because it built Salon 's name. Even had the stock not just sat there, at the bottom end of its possible $10.50-to-$13.50 offering range, few people were going to get rich off it. A recent hiring binge meant that many hadn't vested. On June 21, New York editorial director Larua Miller e-mailed that she and the staff at 1500 Broadway weren't planning a party. "They'll probably be drinking cocktails in S.F., but then they do that a lot anyway."

In some ways, Mr. Talbot and his 4 percent is what this story has been about all along. "I kind of doubted his schemes all along," said one Salon source. "He's too much of a dreamer. But for the most part he's pulled it off. So who the hell knows."

Bob and Harvey Weinstein–the brothers Miramax–have chutzpah. Everybody knows it. It's not a secret. While other moviemakers might kiss up– oh so discreetly, with whispered, off-the-record phone calls –to certain industry reporters, the Weinstein brothers just go all out. On June 23, for instance, they're throwing a big party for Variety editor in chief Peter Bart at Barneys. Why? Well, why not! Plus, he's been on the job for 10 years, and this is just their way of saying, you know, thanks.

Not to suggest that Mr. Bart could ever be swayed in his coverage of Miramax by something so … so inconsequential as a party. Of course not! And not to suggest that the Weinsteins would actually try to influence a media priest. God forbid! But still there's something … well … odd? off-putting? Oh, never mind. It's the new media. Swing, baby.

Speaking of Mr. Bart, he's losing people. His film editor, his TV editor, his New York editors and a New York-based business reporter have all taken off. Not since Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments , with its thousands of extras leaving Egypt, has there been such an exodus!

By Mr. Bart's own admission, Variety is already understaffed, so it's tough. Here's the rundown: New York editor Martin Peers is heading to The Wall Street Journal , where he is replacing Eban Shapiro on the entertainment beat. (Mr. Shapiro is going to Newsweek to be senior editor of the business section.) Richard Morgan, who worked for Mr. Peers in the New York bureau, is leaving for The Deal , a new Wall Street daily. Others have succumbed to temptation and joined the industry they cover. TV editor Jenny Hontz has left to become a vice president at Touchstone Pictures, which is a division of the Walt Disney Company. And film editor Dan Cox has left to become an agent at the Broder Kurland Webb Uffland Agency.

"When people interview here, I make sure to ask that they not use it as a stepping stone to entertainment," said Mr. Bart. But he understands. Oh, how he understands. Once Mr. Bart himself left The New York Times to be vice president of production at Paramount Pictures. "It ill-behooves me to say, Stay in the priesthood," he said.

Have a nice 10th-anniversary party, Mr. Bart! But know that those catty journalists in the Hollywood community have duly noted that Disney chairman Joe Roth threw a party for you last summer, when your book The Gross came out. We're just here watching your back for you. (Note to the reader: Disney owns Miramax. Come on, people. This stuff is easy . Keep up!)

Bill Buford was overambitious in putting together The New Yorker 's "20 writers for the 21st century." That's all there is to it. There wasn't room for stories by 20 writers, and so The New Yorker took the … unusual step of printing five excerpts alongside 15 full stories. Mr. Buford, an American by birth who has spent many years in Britain, likened the excerpts to "teasers in the cinema" (translation for the American readers: "trailers at the movies").

Mr. Buford made a big noise with his literary lists back when he was editor of Granta . But Granta was more conducive to running stories by, say, 20 writers in one issue than The New Yorker , which is a commercial enterprise functioning in a market where serious short fiction is not really all that valued by advertisers.

Publisher David Carey takes no responsibility: "We nailed it on advertising," he said. "We're way over from last year. Last year we did 77, and this year we did 109," he said, referring to the number of advertising pages sold for this year's and last year's summer fiction issues. He noted that "there's an editorial page budget" that they just couldn't go beyond.

Mr. Buford fought hard. "I was arguing right up to the very end with people, throwing tantrums," he said. Mr. Buford said he tried to get the magazine to drop Talk of the Town, the critics and even the cartoons. One thing that did run: the New Yorker -commissioned glamour shots of all 20 writers standing in Manhattan, with views of New Jersey in the distance, at their backs.

Mr. Buford said only one literary agent gave him a hard time for excluding her client's story. "She kept me on the phone for 30 minutes!" he said. Ah, such is the editor's life.

The magazine corralled actors into reading from the issue at Joe's Pub on Lafayette Street, starting on June 15. That night, Mr. Carey enthused about the advertisers in the room. Actress Rosie Perez meandered through a Junot Diaz story–and the author did not look pleased.

At a party at his Gramercy Park apartment afterward, Mr. Buford said he didn't fight for a bigger page budget. He knows a magazine like The New Yorker should be making money. "It's very important," he said.

The five of the 20 who did not see their stories published in full were Michael Chabon, Ethan Canin, Jonathan Franzen, Nathan Englander and Matthew Klamm. The magazine will run their stories in full eventually.

There have been boxes marked for donations for "Kosovo Relief" by the elevators of the old Condé Nast building at 350 Madison Avenue for several weeks now. This has caused some confusion. Just what do the Kosovars need that Condé Nast editors got for free and are willing to throw out?

Not much, at least on the Mademoiselle floor.

"There's nothing in ours," said one confidante. Nothing at all? "Some polka-dot shirt. I don't know if that means people are stealing from it or what."

At Vogue , one junior staff member got nabbed–by Vogue queen Anna Wintour herself–rooting through that magazine's Kosovo Relief box. She thought the box was full of free stuff. Force of habit.

At the Allure box, there was a bit of a tiff between two staff members over whether it was appropriate or not to donate makeup. At Glamour , a stern memo went out via e-mail to all staff members, warning them to get their leftover winter sweaters out of the closets or else they would end up in the box!

The Vanity Fair Kosovo box perhaps gave a clue to that magazine's mindset. (The ruling ethic there is a jolly sense of privilege, mixed with a semi-depraved sense of irony straight out of Donna Tartt.) It contained a slightly torn and slightly pilled pashmina shawl, Stila lip gloss and an outdated movie studio release guide.