Watch Martin O’Malley Sing the “Iowa Waltz”

Maybe he’d do better on “The Voice.”

Martin O'Malley might have a second career option if this whole presidential run thing doesn't work out.Patrick Caldwell/Mother Jones

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After a rally for Martin O’Malley, the long-shot Democratic presidential candidate, at Grinnell College on Wednesday evening, first-year students Wyatt Heritage and Harley Boatsman lingered around hoping they could coax a musical performance out of the former Maryland governor, a rock-and-roller who has often played in public. Though the two students plan to caucus for Sen. Bernie Sanders next week—”I support pretty much all of his social plans,” Heritage says—both students like O’Malley and wanted to catch a video of him plucking the guitar. By the time the pair worked their way through the crowd to O’Malley, the candidate’s staffers were anxiously telling him that he needed to head out to his next event. But with the days of his campaign likely nearing an end—he’s polling at 4 percent in Iowa—O’Malley couldn’t help himself. He grabbed the guitar they had brought and led the remaining crowd through a folksy Iowa-themed tune. Here it is:

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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.

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