| Number 387 | October 6, 2007 |
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This Week: The Fall 2007 Nygaard Notes PLEDGE DRIVE!
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This week's edition of Nygaard Notes is entirely devoted to the Autumn edition of the twice-a-year event known as the * NYGAARD NOTES PLEDGE DRIVE! * This issue is so single-minded that there isn't even an editor's note. Some of you have already pledged, and some of you already know you are going to pledge. You could probably get by without reading most of this issue (except for the new piece "The Keys to Media Empowerment"). You may want to look at the "How To" and "How Much" sections—heck, go ahead and read the whole thing if you like! But please send in your Pledge as soon as possible, and help make this a successful Pledge Drive. Thanks in advance! For the rest of you, here's how it works: Twice a year I ask all readers of Nygaard Notes to consider making a pledge of financial support to the independent media project you have in front of you. It's a fall and spring kind of thing, and this is the fall version. It's similar to the pledge drives you hear on public radio and television, but it's different in one crucial respect: I get literally no money at all from any source other than the direct pledges made by readers of the Notes. No grants. No foundation money. No taxpayer money. No advertisements. No trust fund interest. No anything, except what I get from readers who believe that this independent voice—a voice that believes in, and writes from, the core values of Democracy, Justice, Compassion, and Solidarity—is worth supporting. Nygaard Notes is made available for FREE to anyone who wishes to receive it. I copyright nothing, and that's because I want all of my writings to be instantly part of the public domain. Those of you who make pledges of support are the people who make this possible. I spend as much time as I can putting together this newsletter, and as I receive more money in pledges I spend more time making this newsletter happen. That will either mean that I put out more issues each year, or that I spend more time on each issue. Either way, your pledges will make for a better Nygaard Notes. Also, some people pledge for a while and then they decide, for whatever reason, that they can't do it any more. So, YOUR pledge is needed in order to replace those people. If all of this has convinced you that you'd like to make a pledge, just make out your check right now to "Nygaard Notes," and mail it to: Nygaard Notes ANOTHER OPTION: Pledge online by clicking HERE. Either way is great! Thank you! For the rest of you, this issue explains the process, how and why to make a Pledge, and so forth. |
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In the New York Times Business Section, October 1 2007, was found an article with the intriguing headline, "Why Big Newspapers Applaud Some Declines in Circulation." There are a number of selections in this "business" article that deserve the honor of being a Nygaard Notes "Quote" of the Week. So I'll just string them together, drawn as they are from various points in the article. "The big American newspapers sell about 10 percent fewer copies than they did in 2000, and while the migration of readers to the Web is usually blamed for that decline, much of it has been intentional. Driven by marketing and delivery costs and pressure from advertisers, many papers have decided certain readers are not worth the expense involved in finding, serving and keeping them." "In its home market, circulation is down, as The [NY] Times, like others, has cut back on promotions and discounting. But sales are up in other markets where The Times continues to pursue new, mostly affluent readers." It was Colby Atwood, president of Borrell Associates, a media research firm, who summed it up most succinctly for those of us non-affluent readers who still don't "get it." We may think that newspapers are supposed to be concerned with informing the public, or be committed to providing the nation's citizens with the information necessary to function in the democratic system, or to have some other useful function. If that were the case, then it would certainly seem wrong-headed for newspapers to "applaud some declines in circulation." But, speaking of the newspapers' decision that "certain readers are not worth the expense involved in ... keeping them," Mr. Atwood explained to the Times that "It's a rational business decision of newspapers focusing on quality circulation rather than quantity, shedding the subscribers who cost more and generate less revenue." And that—in direct contrast to independent media like Nygaard Notes–is what modern-day news media is all about.
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When you make a Pledge of support to Nygaard Notes, what that means is that you donate some money to support the project. The reason I call it a "Pledge" is that I hope you will consider it an ongoing thing, like a subscription. How it works is simple: You send in a certain amount of money as a Pledge of support for this project, using one of two options: OPTION #1: AIL YOUR CHECK TO OPTION #2: Donate ONLINE. Once I receive your Pledge, I mark down when I got it, then I wait for a year. At the end of that year (your "Pledge Period"), I will send you a note and ask you to, in effect, "re-subscribe." Of course, if you don't want to, you will continue to receive the Notes, as always. That's why I call it a pledge, and not a subscription. |
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Here's what happens when I receive your Pledge of support for Nygaard Notes: 1. I take ten percent and apply it to office expenses like postage, fees, computer maintenance, paper, etc. 2. I take the other ninety percent and divide it into twelve parts, and each month I "pay" myself that amount, added together with 1/12th of every other pledger's amount. The total makes up my monthly income for doing Nygaard Notes. Just so you know, right at the moment my total monthly income from Nygaard Notes adds up to a bit more than $500 per month. When combined with the income from my other several jobs, that seems to pay the bills every month. As always, the higher the level of pledges I receive, the more time I will be able to put into that worthy activity and the less time I will have to devote to my "day jobs." |
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For those of you who have not been through a Pledge Drive before, here are the three methods that I suggest you can use to determine the amount of your generous donation. You may, of course, come up with your own method; these are simply suggestions. Method #1: Tried and True. Pay Per Issue The familiar way of pledging, or subscribing, is to attempt to determine what each issue is "worth." That would involve a look at the "market," which would mean finding other newsletters like this one that charge per issue and trying to be competitive with them. This "traditional" method is not my favorite, since it makes it seem like each issue is "worth" a certain amount, which is not the way I think. (The way I think is more like Method #2 below.) Still, if you want to do it this way, here's what you need to know: One year in Nygaard Notes-land usually comes to about 41 or 42 issues. So, if each issue is worth a dollar to you, then you could send me $42. Fifty cents each? Then it's $21.00. Maybe each issue is worth $5.00 to you. Then you would send in $225. And so on. Method #2: Income/Wealth Calculation A second way to think about what amount to pledge is to relate your contribution to your own income or wealth. Are you willing to devote one or two hour's worth of your wages each year to supporting Nygaard Notes? Then send me that amount. If you make minimum wage, I am more than happy to accept $5.85 or $11.70 for your annual subscription donation. If you make closer to the median hourly wage for United Statesians of $14.15 (2005 figures), then you would make an annual contribution of something like $14.00 to $28.00. You could get more specific, too. The mid-level wage for an astronomer, for example, is $50.32, so the Astronomer Pledge would be $50.00 or $100.00. In a related way, you could send one-tenth of 1% of your net worth. Since the median net worth for all households in the United States is about $93,000, this would be roughly $93.00. (For help in figuring out your own wealth, the median household income, etc., see Nygaard Notes #138, "Wealth in the United States.") Method #3: Whatever You may think up your own Pledge amount based on some outrageously complex system that is impossible to reproduce here. Or, you may just wing it. Whatever works for you is fine with me! Whatever you decide to send, I will record it and then I will contact you in a year and ask you to renew your Pledge. (Most people do renew, but you don't have to.) I will even send a pre-addressed and stamped envelope—that's about as easy as it gets.
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At the end of the last Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive I talked about the importance for journalists of asking questions (NN #371, "Journalism Starts With Asking Questions: Which Ones?"). I even said that "The first job of a journalist is to ask questions." A lot of people think that the first job of a journalist is to write the stories that we read and see in the "news,.but in fact those stories are really nothing more than the answers to some questions. I've gone so far as to say that an understanding of this point—that the first job of a journalist is to ask questions—is "the key to media literacy." Since writing that I have come to realize that I don't like the term "media literacy." What good is being "literate," after all, if it only enables us to "read" stuff that doesn't help us transform our world? So I am trying to find a better term. For now I will use "Media Empowerment." So, when it comes to the importance of asking questions in terms of Media Empowerment, there is both a personal aspect and an activist aspect. Part 1 of this brief probably-two-part series will be about the personal aspect. Asking Questions For Yourself Once you understand that it is the asking of questions that shape the news, you can see the importance of formulating YOUR OWN questions before you look at "the news." This can help you in three ways. (Actually, four ways, but I'll talk about #4 next week in Part 2.) First of all, when you already have your questions in mind, you'll discover that you can find some of the answers in the corporate media. True, you may have to do some "decoding," or reading between the lines, or digging deeply into the inside pages. And sometimes the important answers are found in the last paragraphs of lengthy articles. But the answers are often there, IF you know what you are looking for. Secondly, when you have your own questions in mind—and are conscious of the attitudes, values, beliefs, and priorities that gave rise to them—you will be sort-of "inoculated" against the attitudes, values, beliefs, and priorities that are embedded in the minds of the journalists who ask the questions that form the basis for the daily news that bombards us every day. Thirdly, people who formulate their own questions are better able to tell a "good" source from a "bad" one. Remember that journalists act as surrogates for you and me, asking questions in our stead and reporting back the answers. It stands to reason that a "good" source of news is a journalist that tends to ask the questions that WE would ask if we were the ones covering a given issue. When you read or watch a news story, can you tell when the answers to your questions are not to be found? If that's the case, then you know that the attitudes, values, beliefs, and priorities of that journalist are not the same as yours. You also know that, in order to find the answers you need, you'll have to read between the lines, or perhaps give up and go find a better source. In other words, you'll be well on your way to Media Empowerment. In summary, the importance of asking questions is: Next week I'll talk about the social usefulness of all this question-asking. |
