January 5, 2010

No More Northrup

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Southern California lost its last aerospace company on Monday:

In a blow to Southern California, Northrop Grumman Corp. said it would relocate its headquarters from Los Angeles — leaving the region that gave birth to the aerospace industry without a single major military contractor based here.

….Northrop’s announcement was seen as a bitter pill for the much-battered regional economy, which has suffered a series of high-profile corporate defections in recent years.

[Etc.]

This is a drag, but I really think they’re overplaying the “bitter pill” angle here. It’s only the corporate staff, after all, and I think everyone has known this was coming for ages. If you’re an aerospace company, the people you need to bribe lobby are all in Washington DC, and who wants to spend their entire lives flying back and forth to DC just to schmooze and eat lunch with congressional aides and Air Force colonels? On the list of bad things to happen to California recently, this barely even cracks the top 100.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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