Salon Folds After 31 Years of Attacks on Breitbart
Salon, the online magazine that published for 31 years, shut down last week. Breitbart News writer John Nolte marked the closure in a column on November 9, 2026, and he did not hide his satisfaction. Nolte argues that Salon kept Breitbart in its crosshairs right up to the end. He points to an October 17 Salon piece that named Breitbart among “MAGA influencers and right-wing outlets” allegedly involved in the “weaponization of justice” against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) By Breitbart’s count, Salon mentioned the outlet four times in October alone. For a 2A audience, the story is less about one website’s demise and more about how partisan media frames the people who cover guns.
Key Details
The column lays out a short list of facts that can be checked against the record:
- Closure: Salon ceased publication the week before November 9, 2026, after 31 years online.
- Oct. 17 attack: Salon described Breitbart as one of several “MAGA influencers and right-wing outlets” connected to the Ilhan Omar matter.
- Frequency: Breitbart says Salon’s site produced four mentions of Breitbart in October 2026, none of them favorable.
- 2016 coverage: Nolte says Salon kept a steady focus on Breitbart during the 2016 presidential campaign.
- Religion coverage: Nolte says Salon pressed hard on the Christianity of Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz, a claim he presents as evidence of bias.
- Source: The column ran on Breitbart’s 2A channel, which means its framing comes from a party to the feud.
Nolte’s column leans heavily on tone and sarcasm. Those are his choices as a columnist. The verifiable pieces are the closure date, the October 17 article, and the Breitbart mention count. Readers who want the exact wording of Salon’s coverage should pull the original articles from the archive before forming a view.
Background
Salon launched in 1995 as one of the earliest general-interest online magazines. It built its reputation on politics and culture commentary from a left-leaning perspective, and it competed for readers with print-era outlets that moved online. Breitbart News started in 2007 under Andrew Breitbart and grew into a major right-of-center site, especially during the 2016 presidential race. Its coverage of the Second Amendment, gun rights litigation, and Democratic gun-control proposals has drawn readers who distrust mainstream outlets. Mutual hostility between left-leaning and right-leaning digital outlets is nothing new. Each side has long treated the other as a foil. What changed is the business. Ad revenue for digital news has shrunk, and smaller ideological outlets have struggled to hold audiences. Salon’s closure fits that pattern, though the column does not offer financial details about the shutdown.
Why It Matters for Gun Owners
Gun owners get most of their news from outlets with a point of view. That is not a crime. The problem starts when a reader assumes every report on a firearms case, a state bill, or a federal rule is neutral. A columnist’s attack on a rival site tells you a lot about that columnist’s priorities. It tells you almost nothing about whether a new magazine capacity ban in a given state will hold up in court. Firearms coverage often mixes statute, regulation, and court ruling into one story, and outlets routinely get the details wrong. Watch for mislabeled firearm types, vague descriptions of “assault weapons,” and claims about what a court actually decided. When a story matters to your rights, go to the source. Check the bill text on congress.gov or your state legislature’s site. Read the opinion itself, not the headline. Pull ATF rules from the Federal Register. Those primary documents do not care which outlet you prefer.
DownRange Analysis
Salon’s closure changes nothing about the law. The test in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022) still asks whether modern gun regulations fit within the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Judges decide that question on history and briefing, not on which magazine ran a sharp column. We also do not cheer when people lose their jobs. Journalists with families in newsrooms are not the enemy, even when their outlet treats us badly. Our advice is simple. Read everything with a source and an agenda in mind. Bookmark the court dockets, state statutes, and federal registers for the issues you care about. Build your own knowledge of the case law so no columnist, left or right, gets to tell you what the Constitution says. The Second Amendment belongs to the people, and the people need to read the primary documents themselves.
