May 6, 2012

Supermoon Over Southern California

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While Will Femia was busy trying to figure out if he could get a picture of tonight’s supermoon rising along 42nd Street, I decided that here in Southern California it would be appropriate to get a picture of the supermoon rising over a freeway. In the end, it turned out that the angle was off by a couple of degrees, so I couldn’t quite do it with the shape of the San Diego Freeway in my neck of the woods, but it was close!

And here it is a few minutes later, rising over the treetops. It no longer has the lovely red color that the haze near the horizon gave it, but since I’m not shooting from a freeway overpass, it’s a little bit sharper. Tradeoffs are everywhere.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

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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.

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