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David Weinberger runs a plea to support Salon as they may go out of business having only 47000 subscribers.
To me it seems that Salon must be run very inefficiently – and people seem to think that this is perfectly acceptable for a 'hip' online company. According to the article David Weinberger refers to, Salon actually has had losses of over 80 million US dollars and spent many millions on advertisments. A subscription sets you back US$ 30 per year.
As the number of subscriptions is similar, a comparison to the German alternative newspaper die tageszeitung (a.k.a. taz) came to my mind. They have almost 50000 subscribers, with 50000 being the number they need to break even – meaning that they're always at the verge of having to close down. Nobody would actually let them accumulate debts of any substantial height, so they don't have that kind of deficit that Salon has.
I'd claim that the taz does more serious journalism than Salon – and they're renowned in Germany for being the best to cover areas that the mainstream media like to oversee. They've always had reports on the middle east and the same is true for Africa or South America. They have less 'lifestyle' sections, though.
Subscribing to taz is more expensive though, ranging from €240 to €420 per year, depending on what you can afford. But this will of course give you a printed newspaper on your doorstep six days a week. (Including a monthly issue of the German edition of Le Monde diplomatique.) Unlike online subscriptions these subscriptions can an usually are shared between a couple of people. Alternatively you can read the full edition of the taz on the web every day for free or pay €120 a year for full access to HTML and PDF versions of the paper.
Perhaps it should be mentioned that the people who founded taz were idealists who wanted to make a newspaper that complements the mainstream papers and isn't afraid to dig into unpopular topics. Still today, people working there work much harder than those at other papers while earning significantly less. Neither business nor coolness are main objectives of the paper and that may explain its humble success.
When it comes to deciding which effort to support, I find it very easy to opt in favour of the hard-working people who actually changed the media world a little and who offer their work with discounts or for free to people who cannot afford buying it. On the other hand, seeing Salon perish may be sad but I doubt that it will be tragic to the world of media. That said, it's an interesting question whether saving Salon is more or less worthy / futile than other things people do.