October 16, 2008

Obama, Sure. But Will McCain Hit Your Xbox Too?

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As Jonathan Stein pointed out earlier, the Obama campaign is leaving no constituent behind. The campaign has purchased ad space in a slew of online Xbox 360 games, including Madden NFL 09 and Burnout Paradise, in 10 battleground states.

If the Obama ads nudge swing-state gamers to participate in early voting, will McCain then follow Obama’s online lead?

Click here for one blogger’s rendition of what McCain’s Xbox ads might look like. Once he gets over that pesky case of technophobia, anyway.

—Nichole Wong

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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.

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