The magazine has of course continued to evolve, and to fend off new challengers along the way. One of the more prominent new paths Salon has taken over the past year or so—and one which has generated some controversy—is the publication of increasingly explicit columns on sex. A day after the Supreme Court overturned the Communications Decency Act, Salon added a new sex columnist, Susie Bright, to its stable of writers (interestingly, all female) already covering the subject.

"We didn't [do it] in order to survive," senior editor Gary Kamiya said. "People are just perennially interested in things having to do with sex." Particularly in America, he might have added, where, despite decades of changing mores, sex remains a more sensitive topic than in most of the rest of the world. Sex draws traffic and thus helps sell advertising, and Salon has been remarkably adroit in balancing the intentional bluntness of columns by Mmes. Bright, Camille Paglia, Courtney Weaver and Cintra Wilson with the rest of its wide-ranging content. "We're not aiming to be driven by sexual commentary," Kamiya said. "We've maxed out columns on sex."

But if Salon has maxed out, Nerve is just getting started—this new Web-based entry has taken the "literate smut" formula and expanded it to fill its entire site, which it bills as an intelligent sex magazine.

Nerve's twenty-something editors, Rufus Griscum and Genevieve Field, say they want to treat sex as something "more than a popular sport and marketing tool," and to some extent, they have succeeded. Although Nerve is overtly commercial—advertising and publicity contacts are prominently listed, as is a membership option which will allow access to personal ads and more explicit photographs—the site does contain a richer mix of content than one might have expected.

Griscum and Field came out of relatively low-level publishing positions to parlay their variant on classic "sex sells" marketing strategy into financial backing, which they then used to lure some well-known contributors. John Hawkes, Norman Mailer and William T. Vollman are all on board, though the Hawkes and Mailer pieces are earlier work resuscitated for this site, and the Vollman story is exceedingly brief (the Hawkes is representative of the writer's best work, though). Nerve is based in New York, and alongside the literary names it features contributions from members of the city's porn scene. A number of photographers, with similarly diverse backgrounds, round out the magazine's central offerings. (Photography is obviously a key component in the site's plans to draw traffic, given the membership option and the Photo of the Day feature.) There are some interesting contrasts, but the quality is predictably uneven. The site is cleverly designed (perhaps overly so), and makes good use of Java and frames.

However, Nerve is nothing if not inclusive—it's hard to imagine a sexual constituency that is not represented. We think this is commendable, since it indicates the magazine is interested in more than the marketing. The question is whether Nerve's young and inexperienced editors can sustain the balance, while keeping the quality level up. There is a built-in tension here between single-minded prurience and a more literate and nuanced view of this exceedingly rich subject; the street is side-by-side with the academy. Nerve could go either way.

(Reviewed September 1, 1997)