The lead editorial in Friday’s Wall Street Journal took the most pointed aim at Salon. The Journal tried heroically to shore up the tattered reputation of the American Spectator, a publication that allowed itself to be used as a money laundering machine for Scaife’s anti-Clinton propaganda operation. So distressed was the Spectator’s publisher about this misuse of the magazine that he protested vehemently, only to be fired by editor R. Emmett Tyrrell. Despite this, and a barrage of other bad publicity about the Spectator (including former Spectator writer David Brock’s recent repudiation of his own “Troopergate” story), the Journal still champions it (albeit somewhat faintly) as a “bona fide publication.”

Salon, on the other hand, is disparaged as an “Internet magazine … (paid circulation zip).” We plead guilty to both charges. Because Salon is free and because of our commitment to publishing important and overlooked stories, our circulation has grown to nearly 8 million page views a month and over a half million individual users. Our reporting on the Clinton-Starr national drama has not only been more enterprising than the Wall Street Journal’s, it has been more reliable. Let’s not forget the Journal’s only “scoop” to date — that a White House steward had caught the president and Monica Lewinsky alone together. Unfortunately, this shocking exclusive proved to be untrue, which the Journal was forced to concede a few days later.

The Journal’s editorialist also implies, in a particularly garbled passage, that Salon has a sinister relationship of sorts with White House spinmeister Sidney Blumenthal. This is a smear, pure and simple, of the kind that the Journal’s editorial pages have long been masters. When facts fail the Journal’s editorial hit team, as they so often do, they resort to party-line invective.

For the record, Salon is a thoroughly independent publication that has published a wide and vibrant range of reporting and opinion during its two-and-a-half-year history. As a scroll through our archives will clearly attest, we have attacked President Clinton from the left, right and center — taking him to task for everything from his failed health-care reforms to his show of tears over the Rwanda holocaust, an epic tragedy he could have brought to a quicker conclusion. Throughout the Lewinsky affair, we have published scathing attacks on his character from regular columnists such as David Horowitz and Camille Paglia, as well as contributors such as Barbara Ehrenreich.

But we have also grown concerned, as have many Americans, about how Clinton’s most obsessive critics seem so intent on advancing their own political agenda that they have resorted to covert and anti-democratic tactics to bring down his presidency. This secret campaign against Clinton, and its connections to the Starr investigation, is a story of far greater importance, in our opinion, than the Lewinsky saga.

The most pressing question, then, is not about Salon’s demonstrably independent journalism, but about major journalistic institutions like the Wall Street Journal. How did a great national newspaper allow its editorial pages to be hijacked, for many years now, by far-right propagandists? During the Clinton presidency, these propagandists have turned the Journal’s pages over to some of the most noxious sludge that has ever been dredged up in American politics, including dark charges about Vincent Foster’s death and Clinton’s “connections” to Arkansas cocaine smuggling.

Who is on watch at the Wall Street Journal while this rot corrupts the newspaper’s good name? When will someone in authority at this venerable publication finally step forward and say, “enough” to this subversion of the Journal’s reputation?

The air has been filled of late with much somber commentary about the damaged reputation of the presidency. But we feel even more concern about the credibility of America’s media institutions. While the public looks on with puzzlement and disgust, too much of the press has sunk to the level of that “bona fide” publication, the American Spectator. It’s time for some deep and fearless media soul-searching.

The evening will be hosted by Salon founder and CEO David Talbot and will feature a panel discussion, including Dan Siegel, longtime Berkeley activist and former advisor to Oakland Mayor Jean Quan; Rebecca Solnit, author and expert on social movements; Terence Hallinan, former supervisor and district attorney of San Francisco; Matt Haney, executive director of the University of California Student Association; and Melanie Cervantes, activist-artist and co-founder of Dignidad Rebelde.

The evening will also feature stunning images captured at Bay Area occupations and Occupy Wall Street by photographers Mark Murmmann, Mia Nakano, Brian Nguyen, Robyn Twomey, Rafael Roy and Gretchen Robinette.

Admission is free, but seats are limited, and will be available on a first-come, first-served basis, with preference given to Salon Core members and their guests. Salon Core members can reserve seats for themselves and one guest by logging in and RSVP’ing here: https://sub.salon.com/premium.

All across America, the Occupy Wall Street movement has galvanized the long-abused American people. Now the movement is going beyond simply protesting the financial industry’s massive theft. People are taking concrete steps to reverse the historic shift of wealth to the 1 percent. Organizations like MoveOn deserve credit for kickstarting Bank Transfer Day, by declaring that “it’s time to make Wall Street pay in our communities,” and calling for a big day of protests outside local branches of Wall Street banks.

This is a good start. Now we need to extend the Bank Transfer idea, disinvesting not only from oppressive financial institutions, but from corporate politics and corporate media. American democracy has become thoroughly corrupted by the flood of corporate dollars and influence. Propelled by the obscene Supreme Court ruling on corporate campaign financing, spending during the 2012 campaign year will likely double over 2010 expenditures, skyrocketing to nearly $8 billion. The Republican Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the 1 percent. And the Democrats are close behind, with President Obama charging close to $40,000 a plate on the campaign dinner trail. Real campaign finance reform is impossible, with corporate-controlled politicians in both parties blocking any substantive legislative efforts to clean up the system.

The 99 percent need to counter this deep corruption by withdrawing their campaign dollars from bought-and-paid-for politicians, and channeling these donations to new leaders who pledge to support the new declarations of independence that are now being put forward by the movement. We have seen the power of digital democracy and grass-roots fundraising. A full quarter of Obama’s campaign contributions in 2008 came from small donors. We’re the 99 percent. We need to harness our collective power. We can use this financial clout to punish candidates who are working against our interests, and to reward those who are fighting for us. When a political leader like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo spits in the faces of the working people, students and Democratic activists who mobilized to elect him by opposing extension of the state’s millionaires’ tax — and has the utter gall to declare it a principled decision — we need to defund him. Our hard-earned money should go instead to those elected officials who regard the 99 percent as their constituency, not the Kochs and Trumps.

Those who want deep change in America also need to support the media organizations that are speaking truth to power and fairly covering the new social movements. Fox News is not the only media mouthpiece that has declared war on OWS. As Salon contributor Gary Kamiya recently pointed out, the daily newspaper in liberal San Francisco, of all places, has also been pounding out a relentless drumbeat of criticism against the Occupy movement. The San Francisco Chronicle has called for the mayors of San Francisco and Oakland to unleash the police against protesters, and when they wisely did not comply, the newspaper’s editorial page prayed for rain to wash out the tenacious encampments in those cities. The Hearst-owned Chronicle has no appreciation for the way real democracy functions. Democracy in the streets can be rough and dirty sometimes. But at long last it’s real. The mainstream media prefers the smooth-oiled machine of corporate-funded bipartisanship. But the times demand rougher strife. The 99 percent are not in a position to fly their congressional representatives to lobbyist-funded junkets in the Bahamas, so we must rely on a scruffier form of free speech to get Washington’s attention.

And now for the shameless self-promotion. Instead of subscribing to newspapers like the Chronicle that are dedicated to snuffing out this exciting experiment in democracy, citizens who want real change should consider subscribing to media like Salon — which demonstrated where its heart was recently by hooking up the OWS site in San Francisco to the Internet. Or donating to web sites like AlterNet, which did the same for OWS in New York. Or contributing to nonprofit online dailies like the Bay Citizen, if you’re looking for a wide and balanced spectrum of OWS coverage in the San Francisco area.

As Salon staff writer Andrew Leonard observed, we are witnessing the birth of an alternative America, with our own new financing mechanisms. We must also find ways to support a thriving independent media, because the fight for a new America will not just be won in the streets or in legislative halls — it will happen in the media clouds, where the battle for hearts and minds clangs loudly every day.

You can make sure that the voices of real democracy are heard. If you appreciate the powerful commentary of Glenn Greenwald and the street reporting of Justin Elliott and the many other columnists, reporters and editors who work hard to bring you Salon each day, then put your money where your heart is. Please join Salon Core today.

Now, six years after leaving Salon, I’ve decided to return as CEO, because I think the country needs a fighting, independent media more than ever.

Americans are deeply worried and dispirited. Three years ago, as the country slid into a bottomless recession, we rallied around a presidential candidate who promised real change, only to see him fall captive to the same forces of greed and endless war that have brought us to ruin. The alternatives presented by the Republican Party would only accelerate this national decline. We’re faced on the one side by a well-meaning but ineffectual leader who has waited far too late in his presidency to rally the people around the powerful themes of jobs and economic justice — and on the other side by GOP leaders who are competing to see how quickly they can dismantle the last decent vestiges of public life in America.

We can no longer wait for the country’s corporate-dominated political system to solve our problems. All of us know friends and family members who are in dire straits; many of us are barely clinging on, struggling to pay the bills and raise our children, while trying to give them a sense of hope for the future. The richest get even richer, the rest of us get poorer. The gap between the powerful and the powerless in America grows wider than ever.

In these increasingly hard times, Salon is dedicating itself to an American revival. Our editorial mission will become more explicitly and aggressively populist. We will be publishing more investigative pieces, exposing the shadow dance of power. And both Democratic and Republican targets will be fair game, since both parties are increasingly under the control of the same corporate forces.

Americans are in desperate need of a true crusader for their interests — not a phony Tea Party. Salon will fight tooth and claw for the beleaguered majority, exposing the machinations of oligarchy with rigorously reported, deep journalism.

For just two examples of this renewed Salon commitment to essential, original journalism, please see Mark Hertsgaard’s “Hellfire!” — on Rick Perry’s faith-based reaction to the inferno that is sweeping his state – and Brad Friedman’s “The $10.50 Voting Machine Hack” – on the frightening security gaps that could corrupt our electoral process.

Salon’s coverage will not be all gloom and doom. We will cover the people who are rebuilding America from the ground up — taking over their local schools, creating community gardens and food barter networks, launching green start-ups.

We’re inspired by Robert Kennedy, who — after failing to convince President Johnson to end the war in Vietnam — came back to his Senate office in a mood of dark despair about the fate of America. “Oh, to hell with it,” RFK told his young staff, with a new fire in his voice. “Let’s start our own country.”

It’s time to start our own country.

Last week I visited the young people who were camped out near the New York Stock Exchange, in protest against Wall Street’s reign of greed. They told me they had little to look forward to in today’s America. No jobs, a crushing load of student debt, and a political system that seems completely rigged against people like themselves. But they had not given up hope. Inspired by the social upheavals in the Arab world and the protests in Europe against rapacious financial elites, these young Americans are calling for their own “American Spring.”

Salon wholeheartedly embraces this process of national renewal. In coming months, we plan to hold a series of American Spring public events in cities near you, to discuss the future of our country. Our goal is nothing less than changing the conversation in America, which is now stuck in endless replay mode between cautious Democrats and zealous Republicans. There is nothing for us in the droning presidential debates and pre-packaged political chatter on TV. Real life is elsewhere. By changing the channel, Salon hopes to finally begin moving the country forward.

We can’t do this without you. To accomplish our mission, we need you to join our revived membership program. We know that the Salon community is the core of our strength. That’s why we will soon be relaunching our membership program as Salon Core.

In coming days, we will announce a compelling package of benefits for our new Salon Core members — as well as our loyal Salon Premium members. You can show your support right now by signing up here to get more information about Salon Core as soon as it’s available.

With your support, Salon will expand its hard-hitting coverage. We will also introduce new creative dimensions like Salon Studio, featuring original video portraits of life in America that you can’t see anywhere else. And next week, Salon E-Books will publish its first offering, the hilarious “A Tea People’s History,” by our own Alex Pareene. By the end of the year, Salon will look and feel like a much more dynamic creature, with a new burst of enterprising journalism as well as an exciting schedule of video and music programs — all offered on the Web and on various mobile platforms.

I look forward to working with you in the weeks and months to come. I know that together we can make a difference.