Both to try to make a profit from their online content and to boost the nearly-non-existent value of subscribing to AOL, various magazines in the AOL Time-Warner stable are all going to go to subscription access only on-line. No more Time essays, no more People papparizi, no more Sunset recipes except for those who either pay or are hardcopy magazine subscribers.
“Information wants to be free” is a nice sentiment, but it don’t pay the stockholders.
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So there going to try doing a Salon. Good luck to them. (I never really bothered with the big print mag websites anyway — I have found that their websites tend to be too busy, slow to load — even with Popup Blocker which at least stops all their ads and subscription windows from loading. I’ve even stopped — mostly — reading National Review online. Their old design was readable; their new design is incredibly annoying, and much too busy.
It’s both a sad and an inevitable move — too many folks were realizing that, despite the inconvenience, they could get 85% of the functionality of their magazines by going on-line for free.
Though I think it is at least as much driven by the AOL thing. They’ve been desperate to find a way to make people see value in going that route.