May/June 1995 Issue

Pop Quiz for

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Is this a photo of
A) a junior varsity basketball team;
B) the latest hip-hop group to break the top 40;
C) a gang;
D) Illinois’ best high school chess team, second by half a point in last year’s National Scholastic Chess Championships?

Murray and Herrnstein, eat your words: The correct answer is D. The students, hailing from Chicago’s inner-city Rezin Orr Community Academy, vied for the national title with New York City’s considerably more affluent Stuyvesant High to take second place by the slimmest of margins. Out of 850 players from 30 states, brothers Darnell and Cornell Faust (first and second from the left in the back row) took fourth and sixth place, respectively. So for whom, exactly, does the “bell” toll? Not for Orr’s whiz kids.

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

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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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