Back in the days of offline journalism, editors' desks used to have spikes on them. Stories that were deemed unfit for publishing were folded in half and "spiked." Sometimes those stories were resurrected, but for the most part, they died there.
In homage to all those lost stories, London journalist Mick Hume decided to call his new online news site Spiked. The site, slated to launch by the end of this month, will feature commentary on current affairs, culture, science and technology and with "a remit as broad as Salon.com," according to a press release.
With just 100,000 pounds raised from individual investors, Hume hopes to break new ground in online journalism with an "online, off-message" approach. Covering topics that are at the top of the public mind, the new online magazine wants to jolt a mainstream discourse that, in Hume's opinion, has run dangerously dry. The premiere issue, with a focus on science, will feature stories on mad cow disease, depleted uranium and global warming.
Of course, this is hardly an auspicious time to launch a new content company. With ad sales dwindling, a tidal wave of layoffs have swept the online news industry in recent months, humbling such giants as CNN, New York Times Digital and News Corp.'s News Digital Media, as well as niche sites such as Salon.
And launching a site that's modeled after Salon when that pillar of online journalism is famously crumbling seems like pure folly. But Mick Hume is not your typical entrepreneur, nor is he your typical journalist. Among the British intelligentsia and media establishment, Hume has a hard-won reputation as a crusader for free speech at any cost, especially that which offends. In fact, "muckraker" is a badge he wears with pride. "(Spiked) is trying to set a new agenda. It stands for the Right to be Offensive," he wrote in an e-mail.
Over the years, Hume's politics have vacillated between the poles of communism and libertarianism, although his critics hail mostly from the left. His notoriety peaked when LM (formerly Living Marxism) -- a small-circulation culture and current affairs magazine where he was a founding editor -- was ordered to pay 375,000 pounds in damages to the British news network ITN in a controversial libel case last year.
But for a man who went from Marxist-magazine founder to columnist for the conservative Times (of London), the leap to online publishing threatens to be his biggest splash yet.
Certainly, though, the odds are against him.
"If he thinks he can start a business on 100,000 pounds, what's he going to for month six? We started with $50,000, before we raised the initial $2 million. It would take $10 million today for us to even get off the ground," said Salon chief Michael O'Donnell, who hadn't heard of Mick Hume or Spiked.
Although Salon had briefly considered a European expansion last year, those plans are now on hold indefinitely, as the company struggles to keep its ship afloat through the market storm.
But O'Donnell said Salon can afford to ignore the British market for now. "We just didn't see the revenue or user base," he said. "There's no business for content in Europe. England's not that big to begin with. I just canceled a meeting there. Why waste the time?"
In England, the online news field is crowded with a handful of the country's top newspapers and TV networks, such as BBC Online and the Financial Times' FT.com, which compete against American sites such as MSN.com and CNN.com. Most of those sites post "repurposed" content -- the same stories featured on TV and in the papers but reformatted for the Web.
With market pressures mounting, the top concern among England's new media companies is how to compete against the commercial-free BBC. The network's soon-to-be-launched international site, BBCNews.com, may feature banner ads, a profit-motivated move that critics say not only undermines its public-service contract, but also threatens to blow smaller news sites out of the water.
Nonetheless, Hume is convinced that Europe -- and London in particular -- is ripe for online content and hungry for a new, independent voice. "Intellectual life in Britain is dying," he said. "People are looking for something different. We've gotten cynical about politics. It's all gotten boring."
Spiked, he believes, can stir things up.
Although he's "not going to kid anybody that there'll be a profit in the short-term," Hume does think that Spiked can eventually make money through syndication, affiliation and sponsorship deals. Currently, the company has just seven employees, most of them recent graduates, and a network of unpaid volunteers. Employee stock options are still under consideration.
Like a true Marxist, Hume said Spiked's priority is to win an audience for new ideas rather than make a profit. "Our backers have invested in those ideas first and foremost."
Hume, the capitalist, completes the thought: "But in the real world, we need to make some money to survive. I have never been against making as much money as possible. There is no virtue that I can see in poverty and hardship."
