April 14, 2008

Blogs: Gawker Media Sells Off Sites

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mojo-photo-gawker.jpgGawker Media, the blog “collective” that includes sites like Defamer and Gizmodo, has sold three of its 15 sites as part of an attempt to “hunker down” as they “wait for the internet bubble to burst.” Didn’t that already happen? Music site Idolator, travel site Gridskipper and politics blog Wonkette have all been sold to companies who can supposedly better sell advertising on them, with Idolator heading to Stereogum-owning Buzznet and Gridskipper migrating to Curbed. Wonkette, a near-legendary site that had been closely identified with Gawker, will now be part of the Blogads network that includes Daily Kos.

Since music is more my thing, I can attest that Idolator has always done a pretty good job, with an anything-goes pop culture policy and ample evidence of the quirky tastes of its writers. But when they post “Top Stories” and it turns out just a couple-hundred page views is all it takes to land there, one wonders how it all makes economic sense. (Not to gloat, as I’m sure Riff page views aren’t anywhere close). Besides, Stereogum and Pitchfork also cover a lot of the same ground. Connect the dots to the recent stories about overwhelmed bloggers dropping dead from exhaustion, and this blog downturn (“downblog”? “blogturn”?) could be all too real. Jeez, Mother Jones, don’t spin off the Riff to Playboy, you’re a non-profit, remember? Guess I gotta up those click-throughs…

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist 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 need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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