September 26, 2014

Chart of the Day: The Death of Print

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Here’s a BLS chart that shows how much we spend on reading-related materials. But what does it mean? It’s true that young folks spend less on reading material than anyone else, but that’s mostly because of their complete non-interest in dead-tree magazines and newspapers. Also, presumably, because young folks spend less on everything than prosperous older folks.

But if you add up the books + e-readers category, young folks are spending nearly as much as anyone else. It’s just not clear what they’re reading. E-books? Longform articles? Blogs? TMZ? Hard to say. Then again, it’s not clear what the older folks are reading either. It may be on paper, but it’s probably not Shakespeare for the most part.

In any case, this shows fairly dramatically that print is dying. As we all know by now, young folks mostly prefer digital. And so do plenty of non-young folks like me. I occasionally have to read a print book, but I’m annoyed whenever it happens.

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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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