November 14, 2021

I Don’t Know About You But I’m Feeling 22 (and Like I Need a Three-Day Weekend Devoted to Taylor’s Version)

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A 100 percent, very real, very serious note from my Slack drafts … 
 
Hey boss, I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling I’m not going to be able to log on tomorrow. I need several 2-hour-and-10-minute time blocks to do nothing but listen. I need another 10 minutes to watch the Taylor Swift short film. Again. And again. I need another 10 minutes to watch the SNL performance. Again. I need time to Google (again) the ages of Taylor Swift and Jake Gyllenhaal. I need time to Google and then examine the photos of them walking down the street together. I need time to Google (again) the ages of Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien. I need time to ponder why Dylan O’Brien, a completely nondescript, not very charming 30-year-old and onetime teen star, is suddenly everywhere. I need time to compare what Dylan looks like in a beanie to what Jake looks like in a beanie. I need time to find out if Taylor is actually friends with Phoebe Bridgers. I need time to order a red scarf. I need time to build an outfit around that red scarf. I need time to send angry notes to whoever let Taylor put on that red wig. I need time to figure out who the actress in the bathroom was. (And if it was Jennifer Aniston, did they talk about John Mayer?!) I need a full few hours to deal with the forthcoming video directed by Blake Lively. Finally, I need time to petition the government to make the third Monday in November an official federal holiday due to the fact that it’s now Holy Ground. This is the last time I’m asking you this. And by Wednesday, we’ll be in a cafe, watching it begin again. Sound good?*
 
*Don’t come at me, it’s a slow news Sunday. 

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

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