November 21, 2008

Now: Even Easier for Teens To Embarrass Each Other!

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Oh my God, you guys. Rejoice, teens of the world. It’s just gotten a whole lot easier to pursue one of your favorite interests: torturing each other on the Internet. On a new site called High School Tabloid, teens can submit pictures and scandalous stories from their very own high schools. Just think: The angst and growing pains of your friends, enemies, and frenemies memorialized—and laid bare for literally the whole world to see! Check out this screen shot from the home page:

hst500.jpg
And its motto pulls no punches: “Gossip, Publicity, Popularity.”

Teens who post are awarded points, two for comments posted to a story and “10 points for posted headline with story.” (So are the points for the headline or the story?) Earn enough points and this fabulous prize could be yours:

Obtain 50,000 points you become an official High School Tabloid columnist which will give you the opportunity to write a cover story, which will be featured on the HighSchoolTabloid home page! .GOSSIP.PUBLICITY.POPULARITY.

Folks, there may be hope for journalism yet.

HT YPulse.

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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?

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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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