The Coronavirus Pandemic Won’t Change Anything Forever

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I keep seeing articles about how the coronavirus pandemic is going to change things forever. Dating will be changed forever. Book publishing will be changed forever. Comic books will be changed forever. Bars and restaurants will be changed forever. Hollywood will be changed forever. Conventions will be changed forever. Remote work will be changed forever. Journalism will be changed forever. Vacations will be changed forever.

I’m going to go out on a limb here: I don’t think much of anything will be changed forever and I wish people would stop saying so based on two whole weeks of practicing isolation and social distancing.¹ All it does is scare people even more just for the sake of being able to write a provocative op-ed. If this is the best you can do, maybe you should just stop writing for the duration.

¹Actually, one week, and that’s only in California, which started on March 21. For most of the rest of you, it’s only been four or five days.

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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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