Joan, are you going to start the new decade by living up to the promise embodied in that Table talk thread ? because you and the rest of salon have been sadly absent from the storm of pleading, suggestions and criticism regarding Broadsheet and lately, the direction of salon in general.

Excepting of course a couple of patronising offhand comments.

Ten years from now Salon will either be gone or it will have merged with Glamour magazine.

Tonight, I signed up for Salon Premium, and the first thing I read was "Welcome to the Next 10 years." It's going to be a wild ride. I've only sent Salon one article ("Shooting Dad," December 22, 2001) but now I feel I have a place to send my scribblings for the next decade. It's a wonderful feeling. Thanks for the promise, Joan.

I've been following Salon since its early days. Always loved it. Still do. The reporting and coverage is only getting better each day.

But this new look. What the hell? To put it simply, your site looks like sh*t. I don't know what sort of usability tests you did but you seriously need to rethink this mess. I'm all for revamping an old site and giving it a fresh look. But a collage of boxes? Seriously, give it another try.

I liked the old site. I adjusted to the new design and liked it reasonably well. When I visited tonight to get my 'next day' news, I thought I'd typed in the wrong URL. It's incredibly ugly, and it looks like the site has been taken over by Yahoo.

Please please please turn back a day and get rid of the hideous box at the top of the page.

At the very mature age of a decade Salon doesn't NEED to be "new media" anymore. You are a part of the established web-landscape, and one of the very few established parts that haven't been yahoo-ified or AOL-ized. Be proud of that and and turn all your energy to the stories and the writing.

The really old media, as in newspapers 20+ years ago did have something that is almost totally lost today: Stringent quality requirements and a clear divide between news that is relevant to society and news that is reflective of society or news that is "merely" entertaining (quotes because I do consider "fluff" to be important in itself).

This is a divide that Salon used to follow rather well, though bucking it intentionally sometimes and sometimes probably by mistake. Do not change that! I feel that much of the anguish over Broadsheet and the re-design in general comes from an unease over what for many of us is the last hope starting to fudge on that line. It may be seem so hip and rebellious to publish articles about Rosa Parks and "Kate Moss' snappy comeback" in the same space - but it isn't. Everyone is doing it and we who want our newssources to help us understand the world don't like feeling like we are subject to a never ending quiz on journalistic relevance - that is YOUR job!

And when you say you are still covering stories "other media can't or won't" the "can't" is a bit disingenous: Every one of the stories you mention should have had a place in a serious news-paper/magazine in the days of the "really old" media. Think about it.

And as to "suspended animation", I for one feel it was mostly good for Salon. I know it is fun to reinvent yourself all the time and try out new things just for the sake of it. Anything gets rather boring when you devote the bulk of your time to it day out and day in.

The problem is that we, the readers, do not do that. Our time and energy is limited, and we'd much rather devote all the brainpower set aside for Salon on the Stories. Not on navigating a cool new design or thinking provocative thoughts about how "Vaginal Face-lifting" and the new president of Liberia are meta-post-industrial reflections on the semiotic nature of the "new media landscape". Or something.

Yes, consumers are lazy - especially when the product is good in its essence. The new design was compared to "New Coke" on TableTalk, and it is a good comparison. Really succesfull brands stick to their core recognizability and don't let the quality slip on their core product.

The necessity of "suspended animation" helped create a big part of Salon's brand - the core product and the design stayed virtually the same over a long time, which made us readers FEEL that this was OUR web-zine, the one where we easily found our way around and the one that we could recommend to our friends without anxiety that it would have turned into something unrecognizable over night.

Again, that stability is a feature of the "really old media". With the rest of the media landscape, and especially the web always chasing newness of packaging my hope is that Salon will focus on the NEWs and not on NEWness.

When I lived in England and Ireland I was a 'Guardian reader'. Then I moved to the States and there weren't any readily available daily left of center papers. Salon has filled that gap and part of who I am now is a 'Salon reader' (which means so much more than someone who merely reads Salon).

Actually the new design has finally iterated into something I like. Clearly laid out with strongly differentiated areas and readable fonts. The subtle gradients in the boxes help them stand out, Kudos - good job.

Jury's still out on whether I like the actual organisation of topics on the front page but its definately very readable now, I'll fill you in when I decide on that - I'm sure you're all waiting with bated breath :)

I like the new design, but I am running Firefox and it looks wonderful! I like the mix of in depth stories and the blogs. I'm sorry others are so grumpy over the changes, but I find it functional, interesting and easy to read.

Keep up the great work! What's wrong with Broadsheet? Absolutely nothing. I'm running a Black Japan theme and the pink looks marvelous in relief. I can't believe I just said that.

10 more years.