February 23, 2007

What Do Jet Blue and Gavin Newsom Have in Common?

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They are both really, really good at apologies. (Jet Blue’s here. Gavin’s latest, in which CBS asks him about “the man code” here.)

I never had any doubts that Jet Blue could recover from its PR nightmare, for the simple fact that I fly cross country a fair bit on Jet Blue, and I haul my butt over to Oakland because their fares are lower, the flights are always, in my experience, on time, and I can indulge in 6 hours of HGTV if I care to do so. (Sadly, I do.) Gavin, I wasn’t so sure (and by recovery here I mean: bid for Sacramento or Washington). But then I saw his “exclusive” interview (and most recent apology) with the local CBS affliate.

Damn, the man is good (though was it the lighting, or does he have a bald spot? Check the video).

He was frank, he managed to be funny, he hit a lot of demos (including dyslexics, like me!) without appearing to pander, he got away with saying “I am who I am” without sounding like Popeye…

Now granted, the interview had the fingerprints of Peter Ragone and Chris Lehane all over it, but Peter’s sock puppet incident aside (Dude! didn’t you learn the lesson of Lee Siegel? Though Ragone’s lesson was a promotion. His boss’ scandal hit just in time.), there’s a reason why these guys, all three of them, are considered killers.

Gavin killed.

UPDATE: Check out the Wiki war on Gavin, specifically if dating a Scientologist reflects badly upon him. (On that subject, don’t even get me started.) And let’s hope Ragone’s not indulging in any Wiki reverts.

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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.

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