January 24, 2007

MotherJones.com Ignores Privacy Laws in a Blatant Attempt to Sell Advertising

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In an ironic and diabolic move to generate advertising revenue to support its journalistic mission, MotherJones.com recently launched a series of ads on its site to encourage users to willingly disclose personal information on consumer habits in an online user survey. Even more shocking, these ads tout that users who complete the survey will be entered into a drawing to win some really cool prizes donated by advertising sponsors Aveda and Patagonia.

When questioned about this blatant attempt to learn more about its website visitors, Associate Publisher of Sales & Marketing, Suzanne Saluti was quoted as saying, “We don’t intend to release personal, individual user information to anyone. We will merely aggregate the data and share those results with the advertising community in order to generate online ad sales to off-set the costs associated with providing in-depth investigative reporting on the site.”

You can view (and participate in, if you dare) the survey here.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

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The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

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Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

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