December 7, 2009

Copenhagen: Time To Get Over Ourselves

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A few hours ago, the United Nations agency that is organizing the Copenhagen climate conference sent out a beleaguered-sounding email saying that the conference venue fits 15,000, but 34,000 people—delegates from around the world, journalists, NGO representatives—are trying to attend, so they’re implementing a “quota system.” Does that mean Al and Leo will have to wait in line?

For updates on that and many other pressing questions, bookmark the Blue Marble, MoJo’s environmental blog, which will be covering the climate talks 24/7. Our Washington bureau chief, David Corn, is headed there as we write, as is blogger Kate Sheppard, and essayist Bill McKibben. And because climate change is the biggest story of our lifetimes, we’ve also joined forces with a group of other journalism shops, including the Nation, Grist, Treehugger, the Center for Investigative Reporting/Frontline World, the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, and The Uptake—together, we have several dozen reporters on the ground, and we’ll be using a nifty by-journalists-for-journalists technology called Publish2 to pull together all of their posts and stories. (Check the right-hand column of the Blue Marble for the feed, and also this page.)

Hey, if any group of people is harder to get to collaborate than politicians, it’s probably journalists. If the latter can get over our myriad hangups and work together, maybe there’s hope for the former. (P.S.—while you’re thinking about it, why not put a picture of your kid–or your pet, favorite celebrity, or self—on our climate cover? It’s a fun way to let your friends, or your representatives, know where you stand.)

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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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