September 15, 2009

Need To Read: September 15, 2009

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Today’s must-reads:

  • Our radical activist Supreme Court? (The Economist)
  • Dems likely to sanction Joe Wilson for outburst (WaPo)
  • Judge: $33 million settlement over Merrill Lynch bonuses “does not comport with the most elementary notions of justice and morality.” (NYT)
  • Andrew Sullivan: Dear President Bush (The Atlantic)
  • Shocker! WaPo publishes another misleading op-ed! (Yglesias)
  • Human Rights Watch’s Marc Garlasco slammed for his Nazi memorabilia collection. (NYT)
  • The skinny on Jay Leno’s new show (NYT)
  • Cry for the rich, part one: Lehman Brothers, one year later (NYT)
  • Cry for the rich, part two: “World’s Wealthy Pay A Price in Crisis.” (WaPo)

Seriously, people, can we cut it with the rich people pity party? Anyway, I post pieces like these throughout the day on twitter. You should follow me, of course. David Corn, Mother Jones’ DC bureau chief, also tweets. So do my colleagues Daniel Schulman and Rachel Morris and our editors-in-chief, Clara Jeffery and Monika Bauerlein. Follow them, too! (The magazine’s main account is @motherjones.)

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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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