Help Me, Virtual Will.I.Am, You’re My Only Hope

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While there was much to enjoy during television election coverage last night, from even Juan Williams on Fox News and Stephen Colbert getting weepy to Chris Matthews desperately trying to hold back from calling the thing at 8pm EST, there was nothing more ridiculous than CNN’s new “holographic” technology. At a seemingly nail-biting moment, with results starting to trickle in, Wolf Blitzer stopped everything to announce something “never before seen on television”: a live shot of a reporter “beamed in” to the studio from a tent in Grant Park. Of course, Wolf couldn’t really see her, so it wasn’t really a hologram (that’s why I’m using so many quotes), it was more like an highly-coordinated multi-camera green-screen, similar to the 1st and Ten system for football games. But that didn’t stop them from talking about it for what seemed like 17 hours. Wolf and Anderson seemed most excited about using the hologram system to isolate reporters from the noisy crowds, apparently not understanding that they were still using the same old microphones and it was the tent that was keeping the crowds at bay.

So, CNN, you’ve spent untold billions of dollars on this technology, what are you going to do with it next? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Virtual Will.I.Am from the Black Eyed Peas, who wandered into the tent and got himself Tron-i-fied. “We’re at an eve of a brand new day,” he declared, flickeringly, but then immediately turned to more important matters: “All this technology, I’m being beamed to you, like in Star Wars and stuff?” Watch what Vulture called a “momentous” appearance after the jump.

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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 canā€™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 wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

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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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