Faced with net losses and retreating ad revenues, Salon CEO Richard Gingras wants to recast the “online-only magazine.” As he tells Poynter’s NewsPay, that means less long-form magazine-like pieces and more quicker, real-time posts.

For web publications, calling themselves a “magazine” may have certain benefits in terms of attracting advertisers and users, as it conveys a note of credibility and authority. But acting like a “magazine” may be harmful to a site’s health. Some 753 sites now call themselves “online-only magazines,” up from just 124 five years ago, according to MediaFinder. Most print magazines share some very basic attributes—paper on ink, has a set publishing schedule, with heavily edited pieces that require some lead-time. But “online-only magazines” can be all over the map. MediaFinder found some online magazines had original content and some didn’t, for example, while some had advertising, and others didn’t. Since many of those qualities could also apply to a blog, the whole notion of an “online magazine” is increasingly meaningless, NewsPay argues.

Salon’s sinking fortunes have forced it to rethink its identity. Last month, Bnet examined the publication’s troubles, which culminated in the layoffs of 20 percent of its workforce. In Q2, Salon’s assets fell 12.9 percent to $2.9 million from Q1, while liabilities rose 12.1 percent to $6.45 million. At the same time, traffic has slipped a bit as well, according to comScore (NSDQ: SCOR), which said that in July, the number of uniques was down 1 percent to 1.1 million.

The recession and pullback in ad spending have certainly played a part in the magazine’s woes. But Salon also thinks that its content—mostly long-form, originally reported stories about politics, entertainment, technology and other topics—is just too costly given the level of interest from advertisers. It believes that advertisers will be more excited by shorter, more real-time pieces. While Slate continues to thrive with its blog-magazine hybrid format, it’s hard to think of any high-profile publications that have pulled off the Vanity Fair or New Yorker model in online only form.

But Bob Sacks, president of marketing and media planner Precision Media Group, says that running away from the print-style magazine format will ultimately be self-defeating for Salon. He tells NewsPay: “If we go to aggregation as our formula, as our business model, we won’t be publishers as we were. ... We’ll lose our revenue stream. We’ll be another funnel to Google.”

• Salon Lays Off Six From Edit, About 20 Percent of Staff
• Layoff Watch: Time Europe; Salon; Buzznet; Sezmi
• Salon Media Raises $1 Million in Equity Financing