Dear readers,
The Save New Matilda fundraising bonanza continues and even as our 15 December deadline looms, we’re working hard to raise enough dosh to keep publishing NM in 2011. We had a great spike in donations this week, including a $20,000 donation from a generous reader. $100,000 is within sight this weekend!
This is very encouraging and we thank the hundreds of individual donors who have stepped up to support New Matilda. It’s easy to moan about the state of the media and to criticise big media outlets for their sins of omission and distortion. Making a financial contribution to independent media is a constructive step — and one which will ensure there are real alternatives. We hope that we reach our target and that we won’t have to return all your pledges. If we don’t make $175,000, all your donations will be returned.
Can we find another thousand-odd individual donors in the next week? It’s a long shot, we know, so in the final stretch of the campaign, we’re turning to organisations.
Yesterday we published this article by Tanja Kovac, the convenor of Emily’s List. She calls on progressive organisations to get behind independent media and support New Matilda.
She writes:
It is time for progressive leaders in Australia to stop whinging about conservative papers distorting their causes and failing to print articles — and to put their money where their mouths are.
Tanja’s point is one that we agree with. It’s all well and good to complain about the neglect of important issues by big media — but the alternatives can’t be wished into existence. New Matilda has been publishing critical perspectives on issues that matter to progressives since 2004. Everybody benefits if public debates about contemporary events are expanded. We’ve published a range of views on everything from climate politics to refugees, from industrial relations to higher education, from technology to feminism — and much more besides.
She continues:
I am calling on the member organisations of the ACTU, ACF, ACOSS and NCCA to take out sponsorship and advertisements in New Matilda, to make a donation, become a supporter or take out supporter packages for members. Instead of pumping your communications budget into under-read newsletters and annual reports give half of it to New Matilda. It will be money well spent.
As we wrote in the postscript to Tanja’s article, we intend to remain fiercely independent regardless of our funding sources, and welcome organisational supporters from across the political spectrum — that’s the good thing about independent media: it’s independent — but we thoroughly endorse her message. If 15 organisations donated just $5,000 out of their next year’s budget, we’d be over the line.
Are you a member of an organisation that can afford to do this? If so, please let us know today by emailing enquiriesATnewmatilda.com.
And if you have contacts within progressive organisations, now is the time to use them. Share Tanja’s article with organisations you think should support New Matilda and tell them why independent media is important. We’ll be happy to discuss advertising and supporter packages as well as larger donations.
Keep telling your friends and family about NM too. We know our fundraising campaign is going to go right down to the wire. We’ll be keeping you posted about our progress and reminding you why NM is worth supporting all the way to 15 December.
Thank you!
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