David Talbot
There they go again
There they go again -- the madmen in the Wall Street Journal attic launch another attack on Salon
size="+1">Our excitable friends over at the Wall Street Journal editorial page are at it again. They have dug up some explosive information about Salon — and it’s much more revealing than their last editorial about us.
Readers will recall that in April, the Journal editorialists fumed about our investigations into key Whitewater witness David Hale, who was the recipient of anti-Clinton payoffs. In trying to touch up the bedraggled reputation of Hale and his patrons, the editorial pointed out that Salon’s paid circulation is “zip” — a piece of information as damaging, in Web terms, as uncovering the fact that NBC’s paid viewership is “zip.”
But this time, the Journalistas are onto much bigger game. Following hard on the heels of such illustrious Salon critics as the Moonie-owned Washington Times, the far-right Landmark Legal Foundation and the litigation-mad Larry Klayman, the man who once sued his own mother, the Wall Street Journal lashes us for having among our investors a fund formerly chaired by William Hambrecht, the pioneering Silicon Valley venture capitalist. It seems that Hambrecht, who has bankrolled such high-tech institutions as Adobe, Apple, Genentech and Sybase, once hosted a party for Bill Clinton and has donated money to Democratic candidates. This is proof positive, we gather, that we’re dancing on the puppet strings of the president and his vast left-wing conspiracy.
These sorts of deterministic, connect-the-dots theories can be fun. We remember our days in college, when Marxist sociology students would spend hours in the campus library, poring over interlocking corporate directorates and spinning out theories of Who Owns America. The trouble, as these angry young scholars learned upon graduation, is that reality is not so neat. And so it is with Salon and its corporate directorate.
The truth is that while Bill Hambrecht once genially shook the hand of this editor, he has had nothing more to do with Salon’s management than that. He does not sit on our board. He does not, alas, invite us to his parties. And he most certainly does not use Salon to carry out his political vendettas the way Richard Mellon Scaife used the Wall Street Journal editorial czars’ beloved American Spectator magazine.
In fact, Salon’s board is a hodgepodge of political affiliations, from Libertarian to Democrat to Republican to Independent. Their only common passion is money, and the fervent hope that Salon makes lots of it.
The Wall Street Journal’s extreme-right editorial board, on the other hand, is driven by more ideological passions. This is why little Salon, paid circulation zip, continues to rouse its mighty ire. Our investigative reporting has drawn blood. Because of our stories on Hale, a former Justice Department watchdog has been appointed to investigate Whitewater’s star witness. Provoked by coverage in Salon and Steven Brill’s new gadfly magazine, Content, the spotlight is at last beginning to fall on Starr’s permanent inquisition.
Now that some of the right questions are finally being asked about Starr and his chums in the media, it’s time to return to a question we asked when the Journal editorial page first declared war on Salon. How is it that the nation’s leading business news publication has allowed its editorial pages to be usurped by such crackpots as Robert Bartley and John Fund, men who have steered the paper resolutely away from the mainstream of business thinking into the misty shores of anti-Clinton lunacy? It’s as if the New York Times had handed over its religious coverage to Marshall Applewhite of Heaven’s Gate or the Economist had named Ted Kaczynski its business and technology editor. Has the Journal decided that combining its sober reporting with a madman-in-the-attic editorial perspective makes for a compelling circulation strategy? Or is a Marxist study group led by Noam Chomsky stealthily boring from within at the Journal, preparing for the revolution in the most unlikely of places?
A heaven made in hell
Even as he slid deep into madness in his jungle “paradise,” Jim Jones found support in high places in San Francisco
This November 1978 photo shows bodies of followers of cult leader Jim Jones at the Jonestown commune in Guyana, where more than 900 members of the Peoples Temple died. (Credit: AP) By early 1977, it seemed that Jim Jones had conquered San Francisco. He had Mayor George Moscone in his pocket and commanded the fawning loyalty of power brokers such as Willie Brown and rising stars like Harvey Milk. Using San Francisco as its power base, the Peoples Temple was ready to expand its operations in Los Angeles, Seattle, and other cities where it had already sunk roots.
But in July — on the eve of a Peoples Temple expose in New West, a California magazine owned by Rupert Murdoch – a spooked Jones suddenly uprooted his flock and fled to the jungles of Guyana, far from the reach of curious reporters and government investigators.
Continue Reading ClosePeoples Temple’s inside man
When investigators began uncovering Jim Jones’ sordid web of violence and corruption, he was one step ahead of them
Former Peoples Temple leader Rev. Jim Jones (Credit: AP) David Reuben — a short, scrappy investigator with the kind of commanding beak that looked like he enjoyed sticking it in people’s business — leaned back in his chair in San Francisco’s Hall of Justice building, nursing a cup of jailhouse java. Reuben listened with growing intensity as a middle-aged couple named Al and Jeannie Mills unraveled a jaw-dropping story about their lives in Jim Jones’s peculiar church. The Millses were the kind of homespun, American Gothic–looking people you wouldn’t glance at twice on the streets. But if 10 percent of what they were saying was true, Reuben figured, this case was going to rock the city — and the tremors would radiate far and wide.
Continue Reading CloseJim Jones’ sinister grip on San Francisco
How the Peoples Temple cult leader ensnared Harvey Milk and other progressive icons
Left: Former San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk. Right: The Rev. Jim Jones, pastor of Peoples Temple in San Francisco (Credit: AP) Jim Jones, the strange and charismatic leader of Peoples Temple, proved a master at politically wiring San Francisco in the mid-1970s. The driven preacher had begun his climb up the political pyramid by planting roots in the Fillmore district, the city’s devastated black neighborhood. Jones moved into the Fillmore at its most vulnerable moment. Urban renewal czar Justin Herman – the Robert Moses of San Francisco — had “literally destroyed the neighborhood,” observed community activist Hannibal Williams, “[and] people were desperate for solutions, something to follow. Jim Jones was another solution. He had a charismatic personality that won the hearts and souls of people. And people followed him to hell. That’s where Jim Jones went. That’s where he took the people who followed him.”
Continue Reading CloseFearless journalism has a price
A message from Salon's founder: "The country needs a fighting, independent media more than ever"
As the founder of Salon and the one responsible for making payroll and paying the bills each month, I am well aware of how important readers – not just advertisers – are to a media enterprise like ours.
Salon members were once the secret behind our website’s success. At one point, nearly 100,000 people signed up as paying Salon subscribers. This amazing achievement – at a time when the absurd mantra “information wants to be free” held sway – helped stabilize Salon as dozens of other worthy websites were disappearing into Internet history.
Continue Reading CloseSalon Special Event: Where does the Occupy movement go from here?
The growing movement against oligarchy has spread like wildfire from Zuccotti Park and across America. Now — as local governments and police departments harden their reactions to the popular uprisings and as the weather grows more challenging — Occupy activists are shifting tactics and strategies. This is the winter of our discontent.
How should the 99 percent occupy America? Where does the movement go from here?
On Thursday, Dec. 1, at 7 p.m., Salon will convene a public forum on the future of the Occupy protests. The event will be held at the Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission Street, San Francisco.
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