Here we go again.
For as long as we’ve had these online fundraisers here at National Review Online, they have been accompanied by a little reticence.
Our readers come here seeking food for thought, not looking for beggars. Well, this week, you’ll find both.
This week is our annual fundraiser, and we need your help. I like to think of National Review Online – the free web magazine that you’re visiting right now — as a multi-layered partnership. We partner with writers who have something to report, a story to tell, a point to make. We partner with politicians who share our vision. We partner with folks who are recapturing the culture. And you partner with us to keep it all going.
This year, you’ll notice, we have Hillary Clinton’s picture on the homepage. The message is: “Help us stop her.” No one here is pining for the Clinton drama’s return to the White House. And neither, I suspect, are you.
In the coming months, National Review Online seeks to bring you comprehensive coverage and analysis of the primaries, the conventions, and the election (please God) of a conservative president. Salaries, travel, light, cameras, and action bear down on our frugal budget. Writers continue to be paid much less than they deserve — or that others offer — and they do it because they know appearing on National Review Online is worth the financial sacrifice — they know they’ll be read on National Review Online, and they know that they will have impact.
The immigration debate surely demonstrated the truth of this claim this year. But, it is far from the first, or last, significant mistake NRO has played a leading role in keeping Washington from making.
And so we begin a week of fundraising here at National Review Online. We do so in new, smaller National Review World Headquarters — a moneysaving move. I tell you this not to whine, but to assure you that we’re not throwing money away. Your donation to National Review Online’s 2007 fundraising drive will be used to do what we’re here for: to bring you the best reporting and analysis we can. Your donation to National Review Online today will help our staff stand athwart history 24/7.
This year, in particular, National Review Online has seen its staff grow — with two new Washington reporters and one additional member of our tech team. They are investments in a bigger and better NRO. But they are investments we need your help to maintain, and to add to.
And so I ask you: Please consider making your own investment in NRO today. $25? $50? $100? $200? $500? Please do what you can. And as you do, shoot me an e-mail and let me know what you’d like to see from us in the coming year — aside from doing our part to stop her, which we will, with your help…
Make your donation here.
Thank you in advance. And if you happen to be reading this and have $150,000 to spare (that’s our fundraising goal for this week), we should talk …