PLEDGE WEEK II

Yep, it’s been six months since our first ever pledge week. We now have over 4,000 supporter-members, whose annual $20 + donations have kept the site afloat, paid our ever-increasing bandwidth costs and other expenses. As members, you also get a weekly email newsletter, the Inside Dish, and coming soon, a feature that will allow members to comment on posts and interact with other members. We’ve had a bumper half-year – from the run-up to the Gulf War, the resignations of Trent Lott and Howell Raines, the monitoring of the BBC, and the airing of many culture war debates. I don’t think there’s much doubt any more that blogs are here to stay and that they’ve helped change the equation in media and political debate. Those of you have been with me these past three years know that this wasn’t a foregone conclusion, which what we’ve achieved together all the more remrakable. Next year, I’m hoping to take this further, blogging directly from the conventions and tackling the election campaign with the speed, chutzpah and orneriness you’ve come to expect. But to do all this, I need your help. This site isn’t free; I haven’t sold it to a bigger media entity; as a professional writer whose time is increasingly taken up with the blog – over 500 emails and up to a dozen posts a day, sometimes seven days a week, around the clock – I need a salary of sorts; and although we’ve done all we can to keep expenses low, we’re still hard-put to make it to the end of the year without your support. If you gave last December, thanks and don’t worry (although if you’d like to chip in more, please do). But if you’re a newer reader, or if you’ve simply put off contributing till now: All we ask is $20 a year if you read this page more than a couple of times a week. If you can give more, please do. If you can’t give anything, then that’s why we will always keep the site free for general access. I could give you a fuller pitch, but if you’re reading this, you know whether you like the site and want to support it (which is certainly not the same thing as agreeing with it all the time). So please take a moment to keep us viable and afloat. We’ll be bugging you all week, then we’ll shut up till December. The details are here. It’s easy, quick and vital for our survival. Please give what you can.