The Jews behind Salon.com
Salon is one of the premier sources of consumable media for both leftist, feminist and/or ‘minority issues’ activists (i.e., what used to be called ‘Social Justice Warriors’ [aka SJWs]). (1) It has actively courted controversy with articles such as those advocating tolerance for paedophilia as well as arguing for its normalization. (2) Amongst other things it also publishes a constant stream of invective against straight White men in general and President Donald Trump in particular.
Therefore it is of considerable interest just who is behind Salon and more specifically Salon since 2005. Since that was when its founder and long-time editor David Daley left the business. (3) It is certainly this writer’s impression - having compared the articles then and now - that Salon has gotten a lot crazier and more outlandish in its content since Daley’s departure.
When I did some good old-fashioned googling, I noticed there was a pattern among its leadership and jewish individuals and interest in jewish-specific issues/subjects. In analysing this I have focused on those with a decision-making capacity in regards to content and the editorial direction of Salon. To their credit Salon, and because it is a small enough operation, has made all of their employees and their job descriptions available on their main website. (4)
I then proceeded to identify the frequent contributors who publish material at Salon and excluded those who publish material very infrequently (i.e., less than once a week) and also work re-posted by Salon from other media outlets. This eliminates content and contributors that are not a frequent part of Salon’s output in addition to those who are only passively published there.
From 2007 to 2016 John Warnock - the Chairman of ‘Salon Media Group’ till 2019 - was a bit of a non-entity in terms of the publication as there is little record of him actively involving himself in the operations or editorial direction of Salon other than providing large amounts of additional funding to keep the loss-making magazine going. (5)
The responsibility for providing this funding has been shared by Warnock with William Hambrecht - the father of former Salon CEO and then CFO till 2018 – Elizabeth Hambrecht. (6)
Interestingly William Hambrecht has long had significant financial ties and investments in Israel. (7) He also has a history of working with jewish businessmen and activists to advance radical social liberal domestic policies within the United States. (8)
Outside of Warnock and William Hambrecht the decision makers regarding content and editorial direction at Salon between 2016 and 2019 were as follows:
Jordan Hoffner (CEO)
Elizabeth Hambrecht (CFO and former CEO)
Matthew Sussberg (Vice President, Sales)
Peter (‘Pete’) Catapano (Executive Editor)
Alex Bhattacharji (Executive Editor)
Erin Keane (Culture Editor)
Of these individuals only Sussberg was jewish and was employed previously by the ‘US Weekly’ and the ‘Huffington Post’. (9)
We’ve already seen Elizabeth Hambrecht’s close links to jews and Israel through her father William; a fact that is also suggested by the fervent opposition to any kind of criticism of jews and the curiously muted anti-Zionism consistently exhibited by Salon’s published material. (10) Additionally, Erin Keane has also written rather purple prose about jewish communal affairs at least once. (11)
Therefore, since Sussberg is the only jew. It is reasonable to state that jews are proportionally represented in the editorial upper echelons of Salon.com, but what is interesting is that William Hambrecht, Elizabeth Hambrecht and Erin Keane evidentially hold pronounced pro-jewish and/or pro-Israel views in some form.
Those who are either jewish or are known to have pronounced pro-jewish and/or pro-Israel views in some form. Thus make up 50% of those with editorial control/influence over Salon’s content.
When we look between 2019 and 2025 the picture is similar with Salon having been bought by Chris Richmond and Drew Schoentrup’s ‘Proper Media’ in 2019 along with pro-jewish left-wing ‘fact checker’ website ‘Snopes’ (12) and then ‘Proper Media’ was itself bought by ‘Sovrn Holdings Incorporated’ in either 2021 (13) or 2023 depending on who you ask (14) because Salon was nearly bankrupt. (15)
‘Sovrn Holdings Incorporated’ is run by John Battelle – who isn’t Jewish – but the company’s board of directors consists of: (16)
John Battelle (Chairman)
Tim Connor (of ‘NewView Capital’)
Judi Hand (of ‘TTEC’)
Fred Harman (of ‘Oak Investment Partners’)
Walter Knapp (CEO of ‘Sovrn Holdings Incorporated’)
Seth Levine (of ‘Foundry Group’)
Greg Martin (of ‘Archer Venture Capital’)
Aaron Samuels (of ‘Blavity Inc.’)
Of these 8 individuals following 3 are jewish:
Judi Hand (17)
Seth Levine (18)
Aaron Samuels (19)
This means that 37.5% of the ‘Sovrn Holdings Incorporated’ board of directors is jewish which is clearly well out of disproportion to the demographic representation of jews in the US population (circa 2.1%) and suggests strong jewish influence at Salon.com as does the fact that pro-jewish, pro-Israel former ‘Culture Editor’ Erin Keane has now been the ‘Editor-in-Chief’ of Salon from 2019 to present. (20)
When we move on to scrutinize Salon’s stable of authors we should note the per week rate adhered to in order to gauge their relative contribution to the publication. Looking through Salon’s articles for the last few weeks – as the writers are not definitively listed anywhere - I have identified the following individuals. Next to their names and positions I have added their mean daily contribution of articles per week calculated over the last month.
Scott Eric Kaufman (Assistant Editor) – 28 Articles
Scott Timberg (Staff Writer) – 7 Articles
Brendan Gauthier (Staff Writer) - 28 Articles
Ben Norton (Staff Writer) - 4 Articles
Sean Mcelwee (Contributor) – 8 Articles
Marc Spitz (Contributor) – 8 Articles
Bob Cesca (Contributor) – 12 Articles
Gary Legum (Contributor) – 12 Articles
Daniel Denvir (Contributor) – 28 Articles
Heather Digby-Parton (Contributor) – 28 Articles
Laura Bogart (Contributor) – 4 Articles
Of these Kaufman, (21) Timberg (22) and Spitz (23) are jewish. Denvir is also likely to be given his shall we say Semitic appearance and apparent obsessive need to defend jews from ‘anti-Semitic conspiracy theories’. (24) Bogart isn’t jewish, but she does like to talk about how ‘terrible the Holocaust was’ and the importance of the ‘Never Again’ mantra for non-jews. (25)
In total these regular Salon contributors published 167 articles between them in an average week of which on average 43 (or 25.7%) are written by jews (Kaufman, Timberg and Spitz).
If we add in Denvir we get 71 (or 42.5%) of Salon’s regular articles being written by jews.
That is significantly disproportionate to jewish representation in the general US population, which is 2.1%. (26)
Therefore, the representation of articles by jewish authors at Salon is either twelve or twenty times (depending whether or not you include Denvir) the jewish representation in the United States.
Thus, we can reasonable assert that jews and pro-jewish/pro-Israel interests and views are significant and disproportionately represented at Salon.com.
References
(1) http://www.amren.com/features/2015/09/a-field-guide-to-sjws/; http://www.salon.com/2015/12/31/5_reasons_2015_was_the_year_of_the_social_justice_warrior_and_why_progressives_should_embrace_the_term_partner/
(2) http://www.salon.com/2015/09/21/im_a_pedophile_but_not_a_monster/; http://www.salon.com/2015/09/30/im_a_pedophile_youre_the_monsters_my_week_inside_the_vile_right_wing_hate_machine/
(3) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/books/the-founder-of-salon-is-passing-the-mouse.html
(4) http://www.salon.com/about/staff/
(5) http://edgar.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1084332/000143774913001586/smg_10q-123112.ht
(6) Ibid.; https://nypost.com/2018/10/05/salon-medias-longtime-financial-chief-resigns/
(7) http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/14350/palo-alto-s-hambrecht-to-increase-israel-investments/
(8) Sam Aldrich, 2011, ‘Dancing with the Queen, Marching with King: The Memoirs of Alexander “Sam” Aldrich’, 1st Edition, State University of New York Press: Albany, p. 114
(9) http://www.americanlastnames.us/last-names/Jewish/S/S-169.html; http://www.bloomberg.com/Research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=208303640&privcapId=90407
(10) Salon agreed to feature content from ‘Mondoweiss’ in 2012, but contrary to what some jewish bloggers would have you believe: ‘Mondoweiss’ features a lot of liberal content about American domestic affairs in addition to criticism of Israel.
(11) https://jewishlouisville.org/musical-brings-songs-to-life-after-near-death-experience/; http://wfpl.org/author/erin-keane/page/10/)
(12) https://nypost.com/2019/05/16/salon-media-sold-for-5-million-to-tech-entrepreneurs/
(13) https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sovrn-holdings-inc-acquires-proper-media-to-expand-solutions-for-publishers-301333248.html
(14) https://www.fastcompany.com/90979276/the-popular-news-site-salon-is-being-sold-to-a-team-of-french-entrepreneurs-exclusive
(15) Ibid.
(16) https://www.sovrn.com/about-sovrn/
(17) https://discover.23andme.com/last-name/Hand; https://en.geneanet.org/surnames/HAND; this is something is surmise on my part given her name doesn’t have to be jewish but there is enough other circumstantial evidence to make me think she is.
(18) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levine
(19) https://www.aaronlevysamuels.com/bio
(20) https://www.salon.com/about/staff
(21) https://twitter.com/scottekaufman/status/646056772977991684
(22) http://www.artsjournal.com/culturecrash/2014/03/historical-documentary-and-the-story-of-the-jews.html
(23) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Jewish_surnames
(24) For example: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/12/war-on-christmas-short-history-101222_Page2.html#.V6h8hvkrLcs and http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/heres-how-conservatives-turned-a-jew-hating-conspiracy-theory-into-the-bogus-war-on-christmas/
(25) http://www.tinhouse.com/blog/42596/a-reverie-of-small-details-an-interview-with-kim-brooks.html
(26) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/usjewpop.html