April 4, 2013

Republicans Embrace Listicles as Key to 21st Century Success

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Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus released an “autopsy” a couple of weeks ago that suggested the party’s woes were mostly due to poor optics and weak use of technology. Apparently the NRCC, the committee that funds Republican House races, agrees.

Yep: they’re doing the thing that every flailing organization does when they can’t think of anything actually constructive to do: redesigning their website. In this case, they’ve decided that cat videos and mindless listicles are the key to political success:

“BuzzFeed’s eating everyone’s lunch,” said NRCC spokesman Gerrit Lansing. “They’re making people want to read and be cognizant of politics in a different way.”….The NRCC’s redesign includes a list of recent and popular posts. Other changes include shorter posts, fewer menu items and a heavy helping of what now passes for social currency on the Web: snark.

The new site comes a few months into the beginning of a broader strategy to capture more of the social Web’s attention. To that end, the NRCC has begun dropping blog posts with headlines like “13 Animals That Are Really Bummed on Obamacare’s Third Birthday.” A recent image macro the NRCC posted on Facebook featured a photo of President Obama laughing below a caption mocking voters for believing his claims about health insurance premiums.

Well, who knows? It might work. They suckered me into writing about it, after all. Still, I have to say that the screenshots of the new site don’t really look all that BuzzFeedy to my professionally trained eye. In honor of the new site, then, I think we should come up with a list of listicles for the NRCC to try out. I’ll get us started:

  • 12 Ways That A Capital Gains Cut Will Benefit You
  • 10 Best Tea Party Costumes From CPAC
  • VIDEO: Republicans Promote Cat, Dog Adoption as “Antidote to Partisan Bickering”
  • 7 Heartbreaking Letters To Obama From Schoolchildren Asking Him Not To Destroy Their Future
  • GALLERY: Five Gruesome Abortion Photos
  • 17 Ways That Obama Has Made America Less Safe

Your turn. Give the NRCC your best ideas.

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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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