June 25, 2009

Yes, Michael Jackson is Dead

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I can’t believe TMZ was right. Michael Jackson, King of Pop, is actually dead at age 50, reports the Los Angeles Times. From reports looks like he was in a “deep coma” when LA Fire Department picked him up, and then died. Sad news.

My personal MJ memory: carrying around a battered cassette tape of Thriller for years, to be played mostly on my sky-blue boombox. Yes, I was a child of the 80s. My mother wouldn’t let me watch the Thriller video (too scary, and un-Christian), so I secretly danced to it at my friend’s house who (blessedly) had both MTV and a VCR player. As someone who took years and years of ballet and other forms of dance, I will say the man was an amazing dancer. If any of you are interested in seeing some of the art he collected (some is legit, some schmaltzy), check out the auction of property he held last month at an LA auction house here.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists 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 hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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