November 14, 2021

I Don’t Know About You But I’m Feeling 22 (and Like I Need a Three-Day Weekend Devoted to Taylor’s Version)

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A 100 percent, very real, very serious note from my Slack drafts … 
 
Hey boss, I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling I’m not going to be able to log on tomorrow. I need several 2-hour-and-10-minute time blocks to do nothing but listen. I need another 10 minutes to watch the Taylor Swift short film. Again. And again. I need another 10 minutes to watch the SNL performance. Again. I need time to Google (again) the ages of Taylor Swift and Jake Gyllenhaal. I need time to Google and then examine the photos of them walking down the street together. I need time to Google (again) the ages of Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien. I need time to ponder why Dylan O’Brien, a completely nondescript, not very charming 30-year-old and onetime teen star, is suddenly everywhere. I need time to compare what Dylan looks like in a beanie to what Jake looks like in a beanie. I need time to find out if Taylor is actually friends with Phoebe Bridgers. I need time to order a red scarf. I need time to build an outfit around that red scarf. I need time to send angry notes to whoever let Taylor put on that red wig. I need time to figure out who the actress in the bathroom was. (And if it was Jennifer Aniston, did they talk about John Mayer?!) I need a full few hours to deal with the forthcoming video directed by Blake Lively. Finally, I need time to petition the government to make the third Monday in November an official federal holiday due to the fact that it’s now Holy Ground. This is the last time I’m asking you this. And by Wednesday, we’ll be in a cafe, watching it begin again. Sound good?*
 
*Don’t come at me, it’s a slow news Sunday. 

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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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