1/ Favor: I’d like to tell you a little bit about @MotherJones and why I’m asking for your support as we, like you, emerge from COVID isolation and gear up for the next year. secure.motherjones.com/flex/mj/key/7L…
2/ I’m incredibly proud of the work we did in the past 15 months. Here's a thread, and a report, on some of the most impactful work we've done in the last year:
https://twitter.com/MotherJones/status/1405295100176048131
3/ And incredibly proud that we made it through the pandemic without the layoffs that many/most news orgs went through.
4/ But that has not been easy. We make our money in a variety of ways, like subscriptions and ads, but the biggest piece of the pie reader donations. And without the ability to meet readers and donors in person, that’s been super challenging.
5/ Sure we had Zoom events, including with BFDs like Stacey Abrams and Eric Holder. But, as I’m sure you’ve all experienced, it’s just not the same. And lack of events and donor meetings has big knock-on effects for non-profits.
6/ And, just as we were deprived of in-person events, we also learned that Facebook had been deliberately, specifically dialing back traffic to @motherjones in a campaign to appease Trump operatives. Still enraged! motherjones.com/media/2020/10/…
7/ So we do fundraising drives twice a year. This one is particularly important. And not just for us. You know the trends. Far less journalists than a decade ago. A few big VC or billionaire-funded entities getting bigger, most getting smaller. It's an ecosystem and...
8/ Like any ecosystem, the whole thing collapses if major damage is done to any key species. Our role has been feisty investigative journalism that's often way ahead of much bigger outlets—think of our work on guns, or voting rights, or extremism—but also...
9/ We're a significant proving ground for young journalists who now populate key roles in the nation's newsrooms. Without such transmission belts of excellence—and a lot of them are gone or moribund, think alt weeklies—the whole profession is at risk.
10/ I'll be back in a bit to tout more of our great work, but for now I'll leave you with this piece that @MonikaBauerlein wrote about the challenges that we, and the media ecosystem face, and the promise we represent too. motherjones.com/media/2021/06/…
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