ANNOUNCING OUR “FALL OFFENSIVE”

MediaChannel’s Survival is Now In Your Hands.

Last Spring, MediaChannel faced a serious funding crisis. Our original funders had moved on to new projects, and an earlier than usual Presidential race was literally vacuuming donations into the coffers of a dozen political campaigns. Even as our circulation grew — with millions of hits monthly - our contributions were not keeping pace. We held our nose and opened our pages to advertising; some of it turned out to be objectionable, but we urgently needed revenue streams. With a shrinking staff and no fulltime development effort, we were unable to sustain our efforts.

We were ready to call it quits, but tried something else instead. We went to you, our readers, and were gratified by your response. Many of you opened your checkbooks or made donations online. We didn’t achieve our goal but we kept going. You kept us alive!

Rory O’Connor and I long ago stopped drawing any compensation for our editorial or administrative work on MediaChannel. All money raised went directly into sustaining MediaChannel. We’re now down to one paid part-time employee. And for those of you who noticed, this unique site was able to keep going all summer long with timely original content, diverse perspectives and global input. We were breaking stories, offering distinctive videos every day and building our subscriber lists.

We are proud of what we are doing, but like that old story about the bear, we were making tracks without getting anywhere. Our accounts are now totally depleted. A recent server problem has increased our expenses. We seem to be back on that plank, hoping once again not to fall over the edge.

And so, we are coming back to you as we explore some new and potentially exciting prospects: turning MediaChannel over to one of our leading affiliates, trying to hand over the site to another entity or find a media school to use it as a teaching platform. In the meantime, we need your help again. We didn’t pester you this summer, but that season of giving has come around again.

Our needs are relatively modest: One salary, rent and utilities, technical assistance, hardware, software, servers… But without more funding, we will have to bid you all adieu, say goodbye, auf wiedersein, sayonara and move on.

That is not what we want to do as the fight against the war, violations of our constitution and economic inequality deepens. We are the only global media website of its kind out there in cyberspace, and the only one covering all of these issues in depth every day - with the help from blogs, the best of the world’s reporting and informed analysis from hundreds of sources. We don’t let partisanship get in the way of our journalism, and we open our pages to your comments and commentary.

As our media system devolves even further into show biz values and corporate interests, our mission is needed more than ever.

We would rather not solicit individual donations, but we are not too proud to beg. We would prefer to find foundations or wealthy donors willing and able to be more generous, but we may have worn out our welcome with too many appeals over too many years. Seven and half Internet years is quite an achievement — but as you know, we are not subsidized by big media companies, governments or special interests. We can only survive if you want us to, if you are willing to do your share in keeping this experiment in media accountability alive. We need your help more than ever, and do we ever!

Yes, we can cash foreign currencies. Donors over $200 will received a free DVD from the GlobalVision library. (See Globalvision.org for a list of our titles.)

You have always been there when we called on you in the past. We are calling on you now. Save MediaChannel and help create a media that serves the values of democracy.

Please share this appeal with your friends and consider yourselves an insurgent fundraiser in our FALL OFFENSIVE.

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