January 15, 2008

Tuesday’s Snoozy Music News Day

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News Jan 15

  • Surprising no-one, record label EMI announced that it would cut up to 2,000 jobs in an attempt to cut costs. Trouble with EMI’s roster of artists continues to foment: Coldplay and Robbie Williams may leave the label, and The Verve may be “withholding” their next album “until they receive assurances about marketing and the company’s financial health.” Well how about Richard Ashcroft give us assurances he’s going to eat something?
  • Bjork Attacks, Part Deux: Apparently the Icelandic singer had just arrived at Auckland International Airport in New Zealand, and went after a photographer when he ignored her request to stop taking pictures. As the photographer put it, “she grabbed the back of my black skivvy and tore it down the back. As she did this, she fell over.” The best part of this story is “skivvy”: most stories are saying “T-shirt” but the New York Times insists “sweatshirt.” I say: female domestic servant.
  • Ever wonder how 50 Cent and Timbaland got so buff? No? Me neither, but now they’ve actually been named as part of an Albany, New York-based steroid investigation. The report indicates the musicians, along with Wyclef Jean and Mary J. Blige, received performance-enhancing drugs from a pharmacy in Orlando. Well, jeez: those microphones are heavy.
  • Barack Obama gets two, ahem, “important” endorsements from the world of rock music: Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy, who says he’s been an Obama supporter “from day one,” and Win Butler of the Arcade Fire who says Obama is “the first candidate in my lifetime to strip some of this bullshit away.” Wait, aren’t you from Canada?

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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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