December 7, 2009

Meet Nonja, The Amazing Photographing Orangutan

Schoenbrunn Zoo

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Nonja isn’t the only animal on Facebook, but she might be the most popular. News coverage of the amazing photographing orangutan has boosted her Facebook fan tally from 3,000 to over 50,000. How does an orangutan become a photographer? Nonja, who resides at the Schoenbrunn Zoo in Vienna, Austria, was given a specially designed Samsung ST 1000 that dispenses a raisin whenever a photograph is taken. She is steadily snapping away, and has even captured a few self portraits.  At this rate, Nonja is on her way to Koko’s kitten-level fame. CNET has more.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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