January 12, 2009

Massive Scheduling Boner by Obama Transition: Inauguration vs. Football

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afcbetting.gifGuess who’s playing on Sunday night at the Lincoln Memorial as part of the opening event for the inauguration festivities? Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, Bono, Garth Brooks, Sheryl Crow, Renee Fleming, Josh Groban, Herbie Hancock (!!), Heather Headley, John Legend, Jennifer Nettles, John Mellencamp, Usher, Shakira, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, will.i.am, and Stevie Wonder. (Don’t live in DC? You can watch on some free HBO thing.)

You know who else is playing on Sunday night? The greatest professional sports franchise in the history of the United States (the Pittsburgh Steelers), which will take on a miserable bunch of thugs and complainers (the Baltimore Ravens) in an hard-nosed bad-blood knock-em-out match-up that will determine who gets to go to Super Bowl XLIII.

I’ve emailed the transition office to ask for a rescheduling. I’m not joking.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists 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 hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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