January 16, 2009

PETA Says: Save the Sea Kittens

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lol_seakitten300.jpgDoes this count as Friday cat blogging? Your answer to that question will reveal just how kooky or clever you think PETA’s new “Save the Sea Kittens” campaign is. What is a sea kitten, you ask? It’s the animal-rights group’s cuddly new name for what is commonly known as fish. According to PETA, fish have an image problem: They’re scaly, slimy, and, uh, fishy. (And they don’t blink. Creepy.) “Who could possibly want to put a hook through a sea kitten?” asks PETA. We’ve done lots of serious reporting on overfishing and other threats to the animal formerly known as fish, but it’s hard to imagine anyone taking those issues more seriously if we’d talked about the plight of the sea kitten. And besides, humans kill lots of animals even though they’re cute (baby seals) or feline (tigers). Fish don’t have a PR problem, they have an edibility problem. So I propose only using the term sea kitten only for ridiculous seafood news. Like, say, actors claiming to have gotten mercury poisoning from eating too much raw sea kitten.

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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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