Gail Ann Williams is Director of Communities at Salon.com.  She previously served as Executive Director of the WELL (which was acquired by Salon.com in 1999).  Her experience and profile in the online community space is as great as you'll find anywhere.  Her views on communities at Salon and what she sees down the road: 

What online communities are run by Salon.com? Can you say a bit about each (including any usage metrics)?

Salon runs two distinct and distinctive communities. We're offering Table Talk (TT), which was created at the birth of Salon over six years ago, and The WELL, which has been around since 1985, and which Salon acquired in 1999. The WELL's 5,000 plus members pay $10 or $15 per month to participate in an environment where real names are attached to posts, and a rich cultural context abounds.

Table Talk ran as one of the best large free forums on the Web until July, when cost-cutting required us to take a look at ad inventory and the appeal of banner ads in forums to advertisers. With the exception of The WELL, the overall Salon business had been heavily reliant on advertising until this year, when we launched the Salon Premium editorial content service. Site traffic was high, ad sales were soft, so Table Talk became one of the most logical cuts, despite traffic ranging from seven to nine million page views in recent months. So we were faced with that most excruciating choice for TT and the many loyal community members.