The View From My Windshield: Heavens to Bessy

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She's Really Friendly: Just don't provoke her (Photo: Tim Murphy).She’s Really Friendly: Just don’t provoke her (Photo: Tim Murphy).New Salem, North Dakota—North Dakota never gets no respect. Even the friends we stayed with in Fargo came up empty when we asked for suggestions on what to do on our drive through the state. South Dakota at least has Rushmore and the Badlands; North Dakota has two cities(ish) on the Minnesota border, and some nuclear silos, if you’re into that kind of thing. Even our road map from the state tourism board was running out of suggestions by the time we got to Bismarck.

But if you want to blame someone for the state’s emptiness, don’t blame North Dakotablame the United States Senate, which brilliantly decided to split the relatively empty Dakota territory into two relatively empty states for political reasons.

Anyways, to compensate for its lack of destinations, North Dakotans have, I think, informally embarked on an elaborate mission to construct the largest sculpture of every animal found on the northern plains. Before we found “New Salem Sue,” the world’s largest Holstein cow at 38×50 feet, we passed signs for, among others, the world’s largest sandhill crane, and the world’s largest turtle. It’s like Noah’s Ark on HGH. And while I’m not suggesting any sort of cause-and-effect, I should also note that North Dakota’s the last great place in America to find a job. So it’s got that going for it.

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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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