Digital Trainwreck

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It seems the recession is spreading in the art world, too. Yesterday, “worry-free” photo storage provider Digital Railroad sent a notice telling its subscribers they had 24 hours to get their images off the DRR server, or lose them. Then they pulled the plug.

Photographers flooded DRR’s servers as they tried to salvage their archives, but not everyone was able to download their work in time. Even photographers with back-ups in other locations stand to lose big from DRR’s shutting down: Re-archiving images and setting up shop somewhere else takes time. And as we all know, time is money.

Hit just as hard (if not harder) by DRR’s closure are powerhouse photo agencies like VII, Noor and Redux, which lost the interface from which they do business.

If this reliable business for photo agencies and stock photographers can fold, who’s next?

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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.”

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