Black Friday and Cyber Monday are stupid, useless days that celebrate a system that is slowly killing us. It supports a cynical, consumerist worldview that all of us are victims of. It argues that we should purchase things we don’t need, upgrade our lifestyle with electronics, devices, and novelty that we don’t need. The price of our happiness is at a discount today, and so we should spend.
Well, today is Giving Tuesday. It is intended to be a “counterweight” to the hyper consumerism of those two useless American traditions that have been forced down our throat.
I’m giving a discount on the annual subscription, and asking for people to help fund this next year. I want to get $25,000 to survive this next year. If I have $25,000 I can focus on work, live, and keep going. If we can raise 25,000 for the next year, we can keep everything free, un-paywalled, and keep charging only $5 for a subscription. I believe in raising money through community engagement, not through charging good people money.
But there’s a catch.
I would still like you to spend the full $50 that you would usually spend with an annual subscription with me. I want you to take your leftover 13.5 dollars, and go give it to another news org that you love, that’s doing good work. The Rover and Pivot have my full endorsements, but they sure aren’t the only ones. Out east, the Independent constantly inspires me to do better work (Justin Brake is my fucking hero.) Out west, the Tyee is amazing, the Alberta Worker is radical… I don’t personally have any connections to Saskatchewan, or Manitoba, but if you’re one of my readers and you live there– go give them money!
If you can’t give because you’re a poor-ass student, or money is tight, or anything else, well, help out by sharing this with people. Help make this into something!
If you need arguments as to why funding people like me is important, well, it’s in part because I have two cute cats who I need to feed, and partly because I’m trying to craft resources for people to point to, and to completely transform the landscape of media. I think I’m about to do it again, I think that we’re about to radically change how people perceive and ingest media, and I’m pretty sure we’ve started a train that won’t be stopped now. I also think these people whom I’ve mentioned above are doing that. Because honestly, they’ve been doing it longer than I have and without them I don’t have a start.
If you need arguments as to why you should give 37.5 dollars to this journalist, it’s because journalism defends democracy, calls out power, and fights for the vulnerable. At least it should. I think I’m doing that. I’m going to keep writing about the most in the weeds stories possible, and look through the most obnoxious statistics and numbers to make sure you know what’s happening.
In the 1980s, no one in the media did the number crunching to expose the destruction of our social systems by the Mulroney government, no one took the time to beat their heads against a wall and call out the Mulroney government and then the Chretien government for choking out our systems. And then Harper did the same. No one is as stubborn as I am, to beat their head against a wall for weeks straight to get an answer from a financial statement regardless of how draining it is. And I want to keep doing it.
The Media is in a dark place. This is because of money. Our system forces us to make profit. Journalism is a service. So, here’s a discount code, please help me reach my goal of $25,000 for next year’s expenses, and please take the difference and give it to one of those other news orgs!
Take care everyone, you’ve all blessed me so much.