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INFORMATION OVERLOAD… The New York Times has gotten its ink-stained hands on the seven-page application form for high-level Obama Administration job seekers. (You can download the PDF at the NYT site.) The phrase “application form” is misleading. The document isn’t seven pages of questions and their corresponding answer fields. It’s seven straight pages of highly invasive questions/demands for information about the applicant’s past. No figurative stone is left unturned. Here’s a sample.

obama_admin_application.jpg

I wonder if the Obama folks leaked this intentionally, to demonstrate how committed they are to keeping conflicts of interests out of their White House and how adamant they are about avoiding drama (letting an appointee suck up news-space because of a nanny problem is definitely not the Obama Way). Alternatively, an applicant leaked this because he or she was aghast at how over-the-top it is. If that’s the case, it’s another teachable moment in a lesson Obama is quickly coming to learn: preventing leaks in a campaign is infinitely easier than preventing them in an administration.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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