Friday Cat Blogging – 12 October 2018

It is Hilbert’s turn at stardom this week, and he obliged by jumping onto one of the new cabinets in our closet. As you can see, he was seriously contemplating a jump to the next level, something he’s successfully done before, but this time he didn’t have the energy. Instead he just plonked himself down and rolled over, displaying his magnificent belly for a nice tummy rub. And really, there’s nothing on the top shelf worth jumping after. No cat food, anyway.

And now, if you’ll look up a bit and demonstrate a wee bit more energy than Hilbert, you’ll see a short message from our CEO, Monika Bauerlein. (She’s cheating, of course, since it links to a much longer message. That’s a journalist for you.) I’ll add a little something to it: I would love your donation of $5. But I would love you twice as much for a donation of $10. And I would love you ten times as much for a donation of $50. And here’s an offer for you: Make a donation of $500 or more (tax deductible!), and I’ll send you an unframed (but still ready for hanging) 11×17 print¹ of any Lunchtime Photo or Friday Catblogging you want. Just email me your address and a URL for the photo, and you’ll get it in a couple of weeks or so.

¹Approximately. The exact size depends on the cropping.

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

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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.

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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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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.

payment methods

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