I have been a Salon reader nearly since the site first went live, and a subscriber since the earliest days of the subscription option.  Salon has always informed and entertained me.  It's also often made me angry, which is something a good news source ought to do.

It has never, until now, made me seriously think of letting my subscription lapse, and perhaps abandoning the site altogether.

Has anyone at Salon actually bothered to read the letters about the new format that crop up in every letters column for every story?  Some Salon staffer, I don't remember who, made the claim that the response has been "uncommonly positive."  It's very difficult to believe that there's been a flood of supportive letters when the public response is so overwhelmingly negative.

The new format is simply awful.  Nearly every reader who's bothered to express an opinion about it, hates it.  And speaking for myself, although the content at Salon remains as good as ever, I'm not sure how much longer I'll choose to deal with the awful presentation.

I have previously made what seems to me a simple and obvious way to gauge readers' true reaction to the new layout:  offer a choice between the old and new layouts, and track which one people choose.  This option was available during the early days of the "beta" period, and it's not technically difficult to implement.  Try this, track the results for a month, and you'll see exactly which is the better choice.

My subscription is up in a few months.  I haven't yet decided whether I'll renew or not, because Salon has been an important part of my online life for long enough that choosing not to renew would be a genuinely painful decision.  But I know which way I'm leaning right now -- and I really doubt I'm the only one.