Hooray! We met our Sixth Goal, Progressing to Seven: More Authentic Reporting

If you don’t need to be persuaded to donate but haven’t already, please go to our fundraiser page to sign in!

Thanks to your kind responses, we have achieved our first six goals: essential IT, bonuses to our loyal guest writers, continued extended links, supporting the comments section, providing burnout prevention, our small team, and funding to expand our reach.

But we are not where we should be! We are behind when we should have enough money in the till for next year. So please head over to the Tip Jar to do your part.

Our seventh goal is to fund more real reporting. It may seem strange to have this as our ultimate goal. Shouldn’t we have asked sooner?

In fact, all of the previous goals are important to keep the site going. For example, rewarding our regular writers is not just about recognizing their dedication; it also helps in bringing new writers on board.

Students told us that one of the things they value most about Naked Capitalism is its unrestricted spread of financial, economic, and increasingly geopolitical issues, and the dynamic power that drives them.

Even if all the positive student responses avoided the worst consequences, we are still in a holding mode in offering wisdom. So please help if you haven’t already! Tip Jar shouted.

Our seventh goal is to fund more real reporting. It may seem strange to have this as our ultimate goal. Shouldn’t we have asked sooner?

The truth is that all previous goals are important to keep the site going. For example, rewarding our regular writers is not just about recognizing their dedication above and beyond the call of duty; it also helps in bringing new writers on board. And many of you mentioned that the Links and Water Cooler are “must have” features.

The students told us that one of the things they value most about Naked Capitalism is its unreserved spread of financial and economic issues, and the increase in the power of change that drives them. Reply from Nippersmom:

Nippersdad and I don’t know what we’d do without the propaganda-free reporting and insightful commentary we regularly receive here on NC.

And Biologist:

Go to the tip jar now for 100$. Thank you all so much for the work in creating this truly unique community space. Thank you very much for reporting on Latin American news. Please stay strong despite being attacked all around in the open press (ie, take a break to stay healthy).

And Michael M:

I just add my thanks to everyone else, for your site and your information and your people. I read your site every day, and it is my main antidote to the depressing crisis of our mass media, and the corruption and libertarianism of Wall Street and the neocon poison of our country. I am saddened that even my well-intentioned friends seem okay with taking sources like the New York Times as their main source of news.

And Scott M:

I really appreciate the quality reporting, analysis, and links you and your team provide every day. And the views are amazing.

And Jan C:

I am sending a donation check for $100. Naked Capitalism is one of my main media sources. Thank you more than I can say.

One of the reasons we’ve been able to punch above our weight is the extremely high quality coverage we receive in this community.

But while this site makes a significant contribution by analyzing and adding expert insights to news stories, our greatest impact comes through original reporting. You’d be hard-pressed to find a site that has forced many of the executives out of office, starting with Andrew Bowden of the SEC for seeking a job for his son from the people he controls.

We also forced a broader reform of the private finance industry by shaming CalPERS into disclosing how much it was paying for one of its biggest expenses, the so-called carry fee. A guest speaker at CalPERS said its disclosure of fees and expenses, which CalPERS only did under duress, has shaken other public pension funds into trying to curb them. Hubert Horan’s Uber series led to reporters finally asking the ride-sharing company’s most basic questions. We have continued to report how private equity is not increasing public pension returns as they continue to pour more money into the scheme, despite media coverage of price increases and service cuts, particularly in the critical health care industry.

Recently, Lambert’s endless report on Covid was early in the morning to focus on *Covid is airborne* and encourage members of the public to practice self-defense, some say they feel lives have been saved. He has continued to include negative public health information as Covid has become more widespread, and more recently, the battle to ban masks. Nick as indicated by a reader above has covered Latin America, primarily from an economic angle, such as Mexico’s push for GMO corn, and his continued interest in digital currency as a Trojan horse for the currency war. Conor gave a wide-ranging comment on how Europe’s dynamic energy comes out of economic pressures, as his new offering on Draghi’s policy agenda shows. KLG has compiled many examples of how questionable scientific and medical research practices have far-reaching implications.

We’d like to do more reporting, but find out why journalists are taking over from bloggers: An originally reported story takes about four to ten times the effort of a blog post to comment and analyze. Consider this previously published example from the Columbia Journalism Review:

In this economic climate, the green light is time-consuming, in-depth reports that may get less traffic than low-cost articles are rare. A recent Mother Jones report in which a senior reporter served four months as a disciplinary officer is an example of this tension. The massive 35,000-word report exposed corruption in private prisons but allegedly cost $350,000 to produce and brought in only $5,000 in banner ads.

We are now admittedly a step closer to saying that Naked Capitalism readers enjoy nutritious content. But still, real reporting doesn’t just take more gumshoe work than news analysis. It also involves pursuing leads that often don’t pan out. And it can require hard dollar costs, such as paying lawyers to pursue FOIAs.

So that’s a long way of saying that original reporting is expensive but very important as the mainstream media both run into budget constraints and are generally fearless.

Also, our actual reporting goal is $45,000. We are already $4,030 from that goal.

So for those of you who are already donating, thank you again for your kind support, and we look forward to those NC fans who have recently found fundraising to help make the site more successful.

There are many ways to give. The first is here on the blog, Tip Jar, which takes you to PayPa and our new payment service Clover. There you can use a debit card, credit card or PayPal funds (for PayPal, the charge will be in the name of Aurora Consultants).

You can also send a check (we love checks! no processing fees!) made out to Aurora Advisors Incorporated to

Aurora Advisors Incorporated
PO Box 110105
Brooklyn NY 11211-0105

Please also send an email to [email protected] with the subject line “Check in the mail” (with just $ in the line of the message) so that your donation will be included in the donation total.

Donate now to Naked Capitalism, whether it’s $5, $50, or $5000. If you can’t afford more, donate what you can. If you can afford more, give more. If you can give more, give more. It will pay for itself, I assure you. This is not just giving, it is a statement that you want a different debate, a different society, and a different culture. As one reader wrote, “A small investment in our future, together.”

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