July 24, 2020

Remember Leaving Twitter Forever for All of 2 Minutes? Get Back on for Ella Fitzgerald and the Armstrong House.

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I’m a latecomer to the microblogging and social networking service Twitter but firmly aware that all the trappings and opportunity costs are real—an attentional quicksand, with bargain-bin goodies and top-shelf prizes. I fully support taking a clean break, never again to look at—what’s that? Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong?

@ArmstrongHouse is a treasure, the lively account of the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens, where Louis lived for 30 years, and it’s a National Historic Landmark open to the public. @ArmstrongHouse reminded the world yesterday that July 23 marked a key moment in music history:

The video-sharing site YouTube also has us covered: Listen to all of Ella and Louis Again to welcome your weekend. If you haven’t joined microblogging Twitter or video-sharing YouTube, don’t feel you have to; this weekend can be absent of each (for two minutes).

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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?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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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