July 15, 2014

Happy Birthday, Twitter! Here Are 50 Things the Media Says You’ve Revolutionized.

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Twitter launched July 15, 2006. Since soon after its inception, the media has been heralding Twitter’s significance. Here is a not-at-all exhaustive list of things the media has credited Twitter with changing forever.

Social media.

The media world.

The world.

The world of Australian political journalism.

UK Political journalism.

Journalism.

“Journalism for an entire generation.”

Washington relationships.

Politics.

Local politics.

The way politicians communicate with voters.

The way people communicate with people.

The way people communicate with God.

The study of language.

Education.

The job hunt.

Small business.

Technology for business.

Corporations.

The corporate world.

The way we pitch ideas in the corporate world.

The culture of Comcast.

Pop culture.

The face of ballet in NYC. 

The way we watch TV.

The business of TV.

TV “as we know it”.

The way TV is made.

The way Ed Burns makes movies.

The way Snoop Dogg makes music.

The way people in Los Angeles eat.

The way people in India talk to celebrities.

The way celebrities talk to people.

The way Kanye West apologizes.

The way celebrities endorse things.

Gilbert Godfried.

The literary critic.

The literary world.

The world of professional poker.

Sports.

The relationship between athletes and sports fans.

The ski industry.

The gaming industry.

The Casey Anthony trial.

Children.

Old people.

The way old people interact with children.

The way hotels interact with customers.

Travel.

The way everyone does things.

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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.

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