December 17, 2020

Prince, Quincy Jones, Madonna: Looking Back at the Music of 1984

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Just 14 days left in 2020. Speed things along with a round of recharges:

1. Michaelangelo Matos’ phenomenal new book is out. Can’t Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop’s Blockbuster Year is a detail-rich read on the constellation of music that shaped a moment, and how a moment shaped the music. His scene-setting, pattern-matching, vivid turns of phrase, and historical vision are every bit as electrifying as the music he’s immersed in. A deeper-dive review in the weeks ahead.

2. Gabi Yetter, a Recharge reader and founder of “The Good in Us,” a Facebook group dedicated to deeds of solidarity worldwide, has published her first novel. Whisper of the Lotus is set in Cambodia, where Yetter used to live. All proceeds from the first two months of book sales go to the antitrafficking organization Justice and Soul.

3. In a crowded field of candidates for funniest folks of 2020 who’ve made the best of an excruciating year, comedian Leslie Jones stands out.

4. If you haven’t spelunked yet through Yesterday’s Print, dig in. Archival news clips with a bite. From 1918: “The man who is unwilling to wear a flu mask usually is of the kind who expects everybody to listen to him when he speaks.” Also from 1918: “Don’t throw away the masks. Two of them tied together will make excellent ear muffs later on.”

5. A headline that sands down the cynicism of any cold news-junky heart: “Over 900 Cars Paid for Each Other’s Meals at a Dairy Queen Drive-Thru in Minnesota.” What? What? And no one called me? I don’t like Dairy Queen anyway. “What started as a random act of kindness…resulted in over 900 cars also taking part in the pay-it-forward chain,” reports CNN’s Alisha Ebrahimji.

6. The Arizona Daily Star and ProPublica teamed up yesterday to host a livestream of stories about developmental disabilities, boosted by the National Center on Disability and Journalism.

7. “A small dam but a big deal,” a colleague told me in celebrating the news of a 100-year-old dam’s removal from a former golf course to improve salmon migration.

Share your own good news at recharge@motherjones.com.

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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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