December 7, 2015

New York Daily News Just Upped Its Front Page Game—Again


The New York Daily News has been running one helluva campaign against guns on its front page lately. Last month, the (financially troubled) tabloid launched one of the boldest attacks on the National Rifle Association in recent memory with just three words: “NRA’s Sick Jihad.” The story inside accused the gun rights group of tacitly abetting terrorists by blocking a proposed bill that would make it more difficult for suspects to buy guns.

Then, last Wednesday, after 14 people were killed in an allegedly terror-inspired rampage in San Bernardino, California, the paper rebuked Republican politicians for supporting victims with their “thoughts and prayers” rather than taking meaningful action to curb access to guns. That front-page headline was four words: “God Isn’t Fixing This.”

Now comes this lesson in high sarcasm from the New York tabloid:

The NYDN isn’t the only New York paper using its cover in this way. For the first time since 1920, the New York Times ran an editorial on its front page on Saturday slamming politicians’ inaction on gun control measures.

On Sunday night, President Barack Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office, detailing his efforts to destroy ISIS and tighten gun control in the wake of the San Bernardino shootings.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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