is to stop reading Salon.

Because controversy sells. If you write to the Board and complain about Joan, you are actually giving Joan a shot in the arm. Because the Board will think -- "wow, Joan has people reading her, and she's generating controversy."

And online, controversy sells.

Controversy generates clicks -- and linkbacks. And the more page views, the more ads are served, and the ad revenue.

Multi-page columns of controversial drivel (see every Salon column written by Camille Paglia) that generate pages of letters generate page clicks, which generate advertising revenue. Drivel = $$

Reader letter wars generate page clicks, which generate advertising revenue. Letter flame wars == $$

Money talks.

If Salon's readership drops -- because Salon's readers go, for example, to Huffington Post, or Alternet, or other liberal online sources for political news that are not slobbering over Hillary Clinton -- THEN the Board takes notice.

So if you're going to write to the Board, don't write to complain that Joan is a Hillary-loving hack.

Write and tell them that you're fed up with the unprofessionalism, and you're going elsewhere, and tell them where.

Because the worst thing you can tell the Board is that you're going to the competitors with your clicks.

(Of course, you actually have to do it. You have to unbookmark Salon, and go somewhere else. Sticking around to continue the fight still keeps generating those clickthroughs, and every click is -- kaching - money in Salon's pocket.)

You have a loftier vision of Salon than I do at present -- but I so very much agree with you, and share your desire that Salon should be what it could be.

I think, however, that I've given up thinking it could be. That is why I spend more time at Huffington Post, Alternet, and other websites these days where I feel that the zeitgeist and editorial philosophy is more in line with my thinking.

That's sad to me, because I've been a Salon member since day one, and was a paid subscriber only until last Fall, when a steady stream of Camille Paglia, Debra Dickerson, and of course, Joan Walsh with her head in the sand, made it clear I would not reup when they came looking for my renewal.

I've actually been complaining about Salon's skewed and perverse coverage of Obama since back when he announced his candidacy over a year ago. So while I agree that Joan -- and Salon -- should, in theory, be offering a much higher level of coverage (as they were able to do during the last election), I think I am at the point where, after sending letters that aren't answered, and watching Joan fail to ever address these serious concerns from so many readers -- I have given up hope of even expecting that we are going to see that under Joan Walsh's direction.

Joan's a blogger, and she's apparently an online manager/editor, but she's proven that she is not a journalist, and let's face it -- you and I both agree she's not an especially insightful or astute commentator or analyst when it comes to politics. She has no unique voice or perspective. She parrots -- there is no creation in her comments -- spoken or written.

Joan's response to Obama's initial candidacy, her seeming total lack of awareness of the growing momentum of his campaign months ago, the historic importance of his race speech (generations from now they will be talking about it ) -- the whole Salon macro approach to the primary, and Salon micro approach to Obama coverage -- they are all blatant expressions of Joan's personal politics, dragged down further by her total lack of vision.

Which is what makes it so tiresome, because truly, Joan doesn't add a thing to the discourse. She just rehashes tired old Mark Penn and right wing anti-Obama talking points, to an audience that for the most part doesn't want to hear them (except for notoriously confused w.e.s. and compatriots of course) then sits back and watches the revenue kaching in as the letters and page views fly.

What is especially galling is that she STILL, now, a year later, expects us to believe it when she says she's unbiased and impartial about Hillary vs. Barack. Here, she's obviously "misremembering" a year of unconscionable Salon coverage under her command. In that hubris, she resembles her heroine Hillary, who cynically expects us to believe that she's got 35 years of experience, and was under fire in Bosnia, was against the war, and so on.

So, Joan and Hillary do truly have more in common than meets the eye.

I agree with you when you say "I believe the readership of any publication deserves a staff whose grasp of the issues is greater than that of the readership, or at least equal to it."

But don't totally write off Salon, entirely, however. Glenn Greenwald continually goes above and beyond. For this reason, I suspect Joan has no editorial oversight over his work whatsoever.

But as long as Joan Walsh is editing Salon, we can expect snide and underhanded, passive-aggressive coverage of Obama, regular glossing over and overlooking of Hillary's every egregious error and fault, and a steady stream of protests from Joan claiming how unbiased and impartial she really is about it all.

Because even if it doesn't serve us, the readers, it serves Joan, and it serves Salon, in that it generates controversy, generates ad clicks, and, for Joan, she apparently hopes it will generate a job offer or a pundit gig.