September 6, 2016

Murder Is Down in New York City

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Here’s the latest from the New York Police Department:

That’s fewer murders, pal. Don’t let Twitter be an excuse for bad grammar. Our kids look up to you.

Originally, I was going to post this to show that, in fact, we’re probably not in the middle of a nationwide crime wave caused by the “Ferguson Effect.” Or if we are, it was short lived. But we won’t know that for a while.

However, when I heard about this I headed over to the NYPD website to see if they had a press release with more information. Not only did they not have such a thing, it turns out they don’t even issue press releases anymore except for their weekly traffic advisory. I originally heard about the crime stats from a reporter on Twitter who said he had received an email. On the NYPD site, I was informed that I could download their official app (iPhone or Android). Or I could scroll through their Twitter feed. Or I could listen to a podcast.

That’s it. Apparently the era of the press release is over, and the rest of us just don’t know it yet. That’s too bad. It may be old fashioned, but it does allow room for a wee bit more detail than a tweet.

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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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