Morley Safer, Paste Magazine and the Act of Giving
I was doing my usual early morning trip around the ‘net when I caught these two blurbs that somehow seem related:
“CBS News veteran Morley Safer says he trusts citizen journalism as much as he would trust citizen surgery. Safer said good journalism needs structure and responsibility. He considers the blogosphere no alternative, saying it is crammed with the ravings and manipulations of every nut with a keyboard.”
And so it seems almost fitting that one should take a moment and blog about this.
I’ve never been a writer although I wanted to be one when I was a younger person. Being a slacker years before the term ever existed, the rigors of “structure and responsibility” Morley makes note of are exactly why I never went down that path. Way too much work. There’s research, fact-checking, source development and you need to know your way around things like sentence structure. So here I am, just another nut with a keyboard on a website makin’ some noise from time to time.
Which brings me to this one:
Paste magazine raises $166K in reader donations (AP)
DECATUR, Ga. — A week after asking readers for donations to keep afloat, music magazine Paste has raised more than half the needed cash.
Editor-in-chief Josh Jackson said Thursday the suburban Atlanta-based monthly has raised $166,000 in donations. The magazine focusing on music, film and culture is struggling after a sharp decline in advertising revenue.
Jackson said the magazine “is not out of the woods” yet but will be able to stay open if donations continue.
Paste announced last week that it would have to shutter without help from readers. Donors get exclusive tracks from artists including the Indigo Girls, Josh Rouse, Matthew Sweet and The Decemberists.
Not much to say about this other than $166,000 seems like an awful lot of money to me. We here at this community have a little box on the right hand side of the page that is available to take donations, and I don’t think it’s used that often.
So here’s my offer to you: if you donate just $5.00 today to keep the No Depression community site alive, I’ll keep writin’ stuff every now and then. Donate $50, and I’ll stop.