October 16, 2009

Today’s Mystery Guest Cat: Shinobi

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It’s Laura, dropping off Kevin and David’s Friday Week-in-Review podcast, the latest mystery guest cat pic, and a public service announcement on marriage from MoJo blogger Kate Sheppard.

First, the podcast: Where is the GOP hiding all the other Olympia Snowes? What made Kevin decide (thus far) not to get a flu shot this year? And why does David think Glenn Beck still has his work cut out for him in Laura’s home state of Tennessee? Listen to the latest Week-In-Review here.

PSA: If you’re planning a wedding in Louisiana, here a few things to remember about the state marriage laws: Marriage at age 16? Ok! Interracial marriage to first cousin once removed? Maybe!

And congrats to Guest Cat #3, appearing balloon boy-free in Kevin’s Drum Beat newsletter today and below. [For Kevin’s newsletter-exclusive weekly bonus post and mystery cat news, sign up here.]

Reader MNPundit: Meet Shinobi, 6, and a total moron. He loves to run up to people and rub them or play fetch with bottle caps and hair ties. He also is addicted to licking plastic bags until he throws up, then running back to lick them again until we have to hide them. I did win the chess match against him though.

Laura McClure hosts weekly podcasts and is a writer, editor, and sometime geek for Mother Jones. Read her recent investigative feature on lifehacking gurus here.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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