February 3, 1998

Hotmail Corp.

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Hotmail Corp.
To lure more users to MSN, Microsoft bought Hotmail on the eve of New Year’s Day 1998 for an estimated $395 million. A leading Web-based provider of free electronic mail, Hotmail currently counts more than 10 million active subscribers, and is adding 70,000 per day. Now these millions must access their free e-mail through a Gates-owned Web site that steers them to MSN—a traffic boost that should allow MSN to boost its ad rates.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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