October 30, 2009

Fight the Friday Doc Dump!

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Late Friday afternoon, the Obama adminstration released a bunch of its visitor logs as well as notes from Dick Cheney’s interviews with the FBI regarding the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert CIA identity. So after you read about how Cheney couldn’t remember anything, consider this: Politicians release documents on Fridays when they don’t want people paying attention to them.

Politicians know that fewer people read the Saturday papers (actually, few people read papers at all anymore), so fewer people will notice the newspaper articles. They also know that since most people read news websites like MotherJones.com and Talking Points Memo at work and most people work Monday to Friday, fewer people will see the news on the internet. Finally, cable news and broadcast news don’t have nearly as large of an audience over the weekend, so they will be less able to amplify what the newspapers and websites report. If you’re trying to hide something juicy, Friday is the day to dump it. Even if someone does find it in the huge mass of information you release, by Monday the news cycle will have moved on.

Anyway, you can help fight against the Friday doc dump: check out the visitor logs and the Cheney documents yourself, and send us an email at scoop [at] motherjones [dot] com if you find anything interesting. The faster we find the juicy bits, the better chance we have of letting people know about them. Thanks!

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.

payment methods

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.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate