It's Oscar night -- and Salon will be liveblogging the ceremony, starting at 7:30pm ET!  Mary Elizabeth Williams, Drew Grant, Kerry Lauerman and other Salon staffers will be posting their tweets to the Salon cover. We'll also be pulling together Twitter's best reactions to red carpet fashion sta… Read full post »

Apologies for the delay this week: But here is your Salon Kitchen Challenge update.

FIRST OF ALL, CONGRATULATIONS TO THIS WEEK'S WINNER:

Jodi Kasten! For her haunting, bittersweet memories of the New Orleans of her childhood -- with $2 illegal booze and delicious food in all corners -- and… Read full post »

As we've pointed out in the past, one of our goals at Open Salon is to help you find an audience for your writing -- not just on Open, but in the world at large. And, as I've pointed out before [link to previous OS traffic post] one of the ways… Read full post »

CONGRATULATIONS to this week's winner: "Felicia Lee! For hating -- yes, hating -- peas. She did watch a pea nearly take her sister's life, so that's reasonable. But she also bucked up enough to give us that story, a fascinating linguistic account of the name of the pea, and a fantastic… Read full post »

As all of you have surely noticed, we're dealing with a really unpleasant attack from spammers (though I can probably think for some more choice words for them) this afternoon. Thanks for all of your messages and flags telling us about it.

Our tech staff has been alerted, and we're trying… Read full post »

As some of you may have noticed, we've rolled out a new (and very exciting) way for you to grow your audience on Open in the last few days. At the top of every post, next to the rating button, we've added a handy Facebook "like" button that looks like this:… Read full post »

Congratulations to this week's winner: Trish Rainbow.  From Francis Lam: "For an absolutely elemental macaroni and cheese, ungussied with sauces or garnishes, that still brought the family home every Friday growing up. 'It was the smell of TGIF and no nuns until Sunday Mass; it was the way the s… Read full post »

Congratulations to this week's winner: Linda Shiue "For battling her pregnant cravings for raw fish by experimenting with cooked  forms of sushi -- and the spicy mayonnaise sauces that make them good enough to stave off a hungry, expecting woman. (Recipe for Spicy California Rolls included.)"

&n… Read full post »

Hey folks,

Remember me? It's been a few months since the delightful Judy Berman stepped into my shoes over here on Open, and I moved over to work on Salon's books and food sections. Of course I haven't left completely: I've still been reading your posts and, as many of you know,… Read full post »

First things first, this week's winner: Rebecca Farwell, for a beautiful post about her son's surprisingly adaptable survivalism skills. You can read her piece here, on Salon itself, and check out the other winners here. 

Now this week's challenge, from Francis Lam:

"Do you remember your first… Read full post »

In case you missed it, this week's first-ever Salon Bar Challenge winner -- in which we asked you create your very own holiday-coping cocktail -- was the delightful Rebecca Farwell. You can check out her winning entry, the Forgive and Forget, on Salon -- and make sure to read Francis Lam's… Read full post »

This past week, we asked you to create a meal celebrating a formative political event from your life. We once again had many delightful entries from Open Salonistas that commemorated everything from 9/11 to Mike Huckabee.

Our winner, however, truly outdid herself by organizing an extraordinary, pun-… Read full post »

As many of you have noticed, Open is having some technical difficulties right now -- links aren't working, and pages aren't loading.. Thanks for all the alerts! Our tech staff is feverishly tracking down the problem, as I write

(photo via Mark Snitily)

As most of you are probably aware (given the many food-related open calls we've been doing), we're very excited to have launched Salon's new food section. In the coming weeks we're going to be rolling out a number of new food-related features on Salon,… Read full post »

Today, after a fierce and lengthy deliberation, we're excited to announce the winner of our first-ever Salon Kitchen Challenge, in which we asked our resident foodies to come up with their most imaginative creation using Thanksgiving leftovers. 

And the inaugural champion is ... Open Salon's ren… Read full post »

If you've been paying attention to Salon's cover page today, you've probably  noticed a couple of things 1. A large cartoon of Francis Lam, our new food writer, staring at a donut. 2. Salon's brand spanking new food section. Both are exciting new developments, not only because Francis spends muc… Read full post »

It's that sexy time of year again: At the end of this week, People Magazine will be announcing its Sexiest Man Alive -- its annual award for the country's most desirable dude. As you know, Salon has a longstanding disagreement with People's taste in men (and its dedication to naming pretty-boy… Read full post »

As some of you have noticed, we've been having some problems with our feed import function over the last few weeks -- some posts are being imported a few days late, others aren't coming in at all. The cause: Open Salon's growing popularity. As wonderful as that is, our system is… Read full post »

Just to give you  a head's up, I'm heading out of town on a much-anticipated vacation until Thursday -- and Kerry's going to be stepping in to update the cover and make Editor's Picks as he can. (You may notice that the updates will be a bit more sporadic until I… Read full post »

As you all know, Open Salon never sleeps. Ever since we launched the site, many of you have been posting, commenting and rating 24 hours a day, seven days a week -- and we're thrilled. But as many of you have surely noticed, there are some times of the week when… Read full post »

Since the public launch of Open Salon, we've had tens of thousands of bloggers join the site -- to write, photoblog and make videos about everything from politics to entertainment, from their gender-reassignment surgery to their experiences serving in Iraq. We've also surprised and thr… Read full post »

If you've spent any significant amount of time on Wikipedia -- the web's user-generated encyclopedia -- you've probably come across things that have made you raise your eyebrows. Some entries are riddled with obvious lies, others are filled with bizarre facts or hilarious in-jokes. Such are the dange… Read full post »

At this point, many of you have probably already heard the sad news: John Hughes, director of "Ferris Buehler's Day Off," "The Breakfast Club," and "Weird Science"among many other films (and the writer of "Pretty in Pink")  died of a heart attack today, while taking a walk in New York City.… Read full post »

I'm sure many of you are still reeling from the news that Paula Abdul -- with her endearingly incoherent advice and her crazy crazy eyes -- won't be back on "American Idol" next season. It's ok, folks, it will all be better soon, especially if the producers find somebody equally entertaining… Read full post »

This weekend in Salon, Katharine Mieszkowski has a heartbreaking interview with Vicki Forman, the mother of a severely-premature son who lived with multiple disabilities until the age of seven, when he died from what she calls "complications from his pre-maturity." Forman touches on many of the diffi… Read full post »