September 29, 2011

San Francisco Meetup

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In the comments downblog, a few people asked if I planned to meet up with Bay Area readers while I was in town. This slipped my mind, actually, but as it happens I’m free Thursday night. So here’s the deal: I’m going to be largely tied up most of the day, so someone will have to organize this in the comment section. If it’s just one or two people, that’s fine. If it’s a bigger crowd, that’s great too. I have a strong craving for Chinese food at the moment, but anything else will do if the masses speak up in unison for something different. I can make it to any place that’s fairly easily accessible from downtown.

So…..any takers for dinner on Thursday? I’ll try to check in around noon, and if there’s some kind of consensus I’ll post it as an update.

UPDATE: I don’t have access to comments at the moment, but compromising a bit between various suggestions, times, and closeness to my hotel….how about R&G (on Kearney just north of Sacramento) at 7:00? Can I get a show of hands in comments for how many people are OK with that? (It’s fine to show up late or leave early, of course.)

CONFIRMATION: This is to confirm the meetup. We’ll be at R&G at 7:00 tonight. It looks like maybe half dozen folks will be there. But maybe more! See you there.

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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.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist 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 need readers to show up for us big time—again.

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.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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