Salon.com's loss can be a gain for its ex-employees

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This one comes from the Scooby-do "ruh?" files, er, Valleywag.com. John Cook explains that San Francisco based news website Salon.com is laying off six people to become more of a "true website."

Salon CEO Richard Gingras told Gawker they released three editors, one writer, one photo editor, and one producer. After some digging, Valleywag's Cook produced this list:

Jeanne Carstensen, managing editor
Kevin Berger, features editor
Katharine Mieszkowski, senior writer
Joy Press, culture editor
Caitlin Shamberg, multimedia editor
Julie Coburn, photo editor

My recommendation is that all of them start their own blogs and video channels, and then get their own sponsors or sign up as a You Tube Partner, as I have been. My prediction for news in new media is that more and more it will become personality-driven. That is we'll follow people and news about or by people far more than brands, unless the brand happens to be a person.

Do we have this already? Yes. It's in - drum roll please - the entertainment industry. We follow bands and singers less than record labels. It's as if record labels are a dime-a-dozen and performers move from one to the other or start their own. That's where news is headed.

Why?

I think it's a function of how people use the web: to look for information about other people. We like to learn what other people have to say or what they did; it's no surprise that the largest internet traffic draws are people and what they do. Now, very soon, that something's going to be reporting, blogging, or vlogging about the news.

In the wake of this development websites like Salon will die a slow death. Sites like The Huffington Post will survive and thrive because they get that people want to read what, for example, Alec Baldwin thinks about Michael Vick.

Is this a bad development? No. It's more honest. By that, I mean it's more attune to where our culture is going. I really don't like the idea that we had to rely on a few brands to deliver the news. It opens a lot of questions in hindsight, like what other news did we miss because an editor considered it not newsworthy?

The Drudge Report hit the Internet big time after reporting on a story Newsweek buried: the affair between then-President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Now, we know who Matt Drudge is and Newsweek's a shadow of its former circulation self.

With this Drudge the man has become Drudge the brand as much as Rush Limbaugh has on radio. Yes, they're both conservative, but they set the standard for the future of news. And since nature abhors a vacuum, liberal personalities will grow to take on Drudge and Limbaugh on the Internet and radio. Indeed, we already have Andrew Sullivan and his blog, as one example, and Taylor Marsh as another. News by pundit. It's only a matter of time before we have more names that become brands, moving from place to place online or being in many places at once.

Buckle up.