More Alarming Spill Footage

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Senators released several new terrifying videos of the well gushing oil into the Gulf yesterday. But the video below is perhaps the most shocking of all: footage of the spill site from Monday, May 17—the day after a pipe was inserted into the well to siphon a portion of the spill to the surface.

According to BP, the riser–a device that operates like a catheter–has allowed crews to capture 1,000 barrels of oil each day. That would be about one-fifth of the oil, if you believe BP’s estimate of the total size of the spill. But many people don’t think BP’s estimate is accurate. Outside estimates range from 26,000 barrels per day to 71,400. If that’s the case, siphoning off 1,000 barrels isn’t really all that much. BP, mind you, refused to release images of the spill site for weeks, and only released this new round of videos yesterday under pressure from senators. The company has clearly tried to keep the public from seeing exactly what is going on in the Gulf.

BP plans to use a “junk shot” to plug the well this weekend, a method the company describes as choking off the flow of oil and natural gas by shooting debris down the well. This is the latest effort to stop the spill—after capping it failed twice. But if the junk shot fails, experts say it would take until August for BP to drill a relief well.

So if this is what the well looks like with the temporary fix in place, we could be in for months of spillage at an unknown (and likely very high) rate.

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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.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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