Way, way back in 1995, a group of publishing pioneers had the crazy idea that maybe they could start an online magazine that would revolutionize journalism. Salon.com was born, drew enormous buzz, produced some stellar journalism and managed to hold an IPO.

But even in the frothiest of times, the San Francisco-based site barely paid the bills, and after the dot-com bust, it seemed to be perpetually on the verge of going bust. It became a bit of a parlor game among journalists to figure just when Salon would run out of money.

Last week, the company announced a new CEO as well as some layoffs. But the chances that she can put Salon on the path to sustainability seem remote.

Instead, this one-time trailblazer now seems destined to serve as a cautionary tale about how rapidly the Internet is disrupting the media business. While newspapers know that story all too well, even all-digital businesses like Salon are not immune.

The pace of change seems to accelerate by the day. Any media organization unable to constantly reinvent itself and innovate risks being left in a ditch.

A look at Salon’s financial statements reveals a company that stands on the precipice. They are an absolute horror show.

For the three months ending in December 2011, the company lost $997,000 on $1.03 million in revenues. So they’re making about half the money they need just to cover expenses. The company had not yet filed its earnings statement for the quarter ending in March.

That should be interesting when it does because of this tidbit in the financial filing: “Salon estimates it will require approximately ($1 million) in additional funding to meet its operating needs for the balance of its fiscal year.”

Since Salon is still around, we can assume it got the money. In recent years, such gifts generally came from two sources: “The Company remains dependent upon its two largest stockholders for continued financial support while it seeks external financing from potential investors in the form of additional indebtedness or through the sale of equity securities in a private placement.”

Those “two largest stockholders” are not named, but it’s widely known that they are John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe Systems, and Bill Hambrecht, the legendary investment banker. According to filings, during the nine months ending in December, the pair chipped in $2.125 million in cash.

How long are they willing to keep underwriting what has become journalism’s most notable nonprofit news organization? I reached out to both but neither was available.

Their support is laudable. Salon has truly produced some outstanding journalism over the year. But still, do they believe there are any options left for Salon at this point?

Salon once had a premium subscription service that attracted 100,000 members and generated $8 million in annual revenue. The magazine hired high-caliber writers and journalists who produced great content. That propelled it to an IPO in 1999.

But over time, the company turned its attention to focus more on its free, ad-driven business and lost most of those subscribers and its revenue. At the same time, the Web changed, and Salon failed to change with it.

Over the past decade, the emergence of blogs and social media changed the digital game. Salon, for many years, failed to embrace this new dynamic. Instead, new media companies like the Huffington Post emerged, which was powered initially by aggregating content created by others and recruiting large networks of unpaid bloggers. Eventually, Huffington Post started making enough money to hire its own stable of professional journalists on the way to being acquired by AOL.

A few years ago it launched “Open Salon,” a blogging network that lets anyone publish, similar to the Huffington Post. More recently, co-founder David Talbot tried to revive Salon with a kind of NPR-style membership service called “Salon Core” that never got much traction. This month, the company announced Talbot was stepping down as CEO and was being replaced by Salon’s chief technology officer, Cindy Jeffers, who was previously at the Huffington Post.

Jeffers was also not available to comment. But Salon spokesman Liam O’Donoghue said the company has a plan to become profitable again, noting it recently hired a new advertising sales director and new sales people in several major media markets.

“All media is struggling right now,” he said. “Newspapers are going out of business and laying people off. It’s a tough business to make profitable.”

True. But it doesn’t change the depth of Salon’s problems and its lack of clear choices.

Ken Doctor, a media analyst for Outsell, said Salon’s problem is that on a national level there remain plenty of new and traditional news organizations. Salon has a national focus but a smaller readership than say The New York Times or Huffington Post, making it hard to compete for enough ad dollars that cover the cost of its staff of paid, professional journalists.

One option might be to convert to a true nonprofit status. But Doctor notes that foundations have been more focused on seeding coverage of state and local issues.

“They are betwixt and between these two models,” Doctor said. “They’re going against the economics of the business at this time.

“You’ve got to ask: How essential are they and to whom?”

There is a part of me, of course, that naturally roots for any new journalism venture to succeed and prove its viability. And I hope Salon eventually serves as a model of the power of perseverance.

But right now, I fear it’s become mostly an exercise in futility and an example of the relentless wave of creative destruction rolling across media companies everywhere.

Contact Chris O’Brien at 415-298-0207 or cobrien@mercurynews.com. Follow him on Twitter at obrien and read his blog posts at www.siliconbeat.com.