Kudos! Met Our Sixth Goal, On to Our Seventh: More Original Reporting

If you don’t need to be persuaded to give but just haven’t done so yet, please go right to our fundraiser page to chip in!

Thanks to your backing, we’ve hit our first six targets: essential IT, supporting the comments section, funding the new Coffee Break/Sunday links features, bonuses to our esteemed writers, continuing expanded Links, and providing burnout prevention.

But we are not where we should be! We are still behind where we need to have enough cash in the till for the upcoming year. So please head to the Tip Jar to do your part.

Our seventh goal is funding for more original reporting. It may seem weird to have this as our final goal. Shouldn’t we have asked sooner?

In fact, all the the previous targets are essential to keep the site going. For instance, rewarding our regular writers isn’t just to recognize their dedication; it also helps in bringing accomplished writers on board, as you can see with Haig, Nat, and Curro.

Readers have told us that one thing they particularly value about Naked Capitalism is its incisive coverage of financial, economic, and increasingly geopolitical news, and the power dynamics that drive them.

Even though all of the wonderful reader responses have averted worst-case outcomes, we are still in catch-up mode donation-wise. So please help out if you haven’t yet! The Tip Jar beckons. From amfortas:

i dont remember how i found this place…somewhere around the GFC of 08, i think,(i dont really do Time, as it were,lol) and just kinda glommed on.lurked for a long while, as is my wont.my first comments may have been about organic/regenerative ag, and all the weird thangs i get up to out here on the Farm.idk.but y’all were there for me and Tam, when she got cancer…and all the way to the end…and that, i will never forget.(those thread are saved in the file with all my diary entries from that time, and ongoing)i just wish i had money to send.for those who do have a lil extra jack…put yer money where yer mouth is and hit up the tip jar.

From wetware_antenna:

Keep up the excellent work and thank you for providing this critical space as a haven from all the madness and stupidity of this world.

Godspeed!

And Roxan:

Check is in the mail, but can’t afford what NC is really worth! Thanks for all the hard work!

And IowanX:

Congratulations for continuing to run the best website on the planet! $100 is the best I can do this year.

One of the reasons we’ve been able to punch above our weight is the considerable and extremely high quality input we get from this community.

But as much as this site makes an important contribution via analyzing and adding expert insights to news stories, our greatest impact has come via original reporting. You’d be hard-pressed to find a site that has forced as many officials we forced from their posts, starting with the SEC’s Andrew Bowden for seeking a job for his son from the very people he regulates.

We also forced an industry-wide change in private equity by shaming CalPERS into disclosing how much it was paying via one of its biggest fees, the so-called carry fee. Hubert Horan’s Uber series has led to reporters finally questioning the ride-sharing company’s fundamentals. More recently, Lambert’s relentless Covid reporting was early to focus on *Covid is airborne* and encourage member of the community to practice layered defenses, which some have said they feel saved lives.

Conor has dug into new angles, such as the importance of South Africa on global trade routes. Nick had been relentless on the war on cash (and now some backpedaling light of possibly erratic power) and digital ID schemes. KLG has been chronicling important medical advances (including challenging vaporware) and the impact of Trump’s wrecking ball on science practice. Curro filed a report from BRICS 2025. Haig has peered into the corner of military weaponry, grift, and chicanery. Nat (along with Conor and Nick) has looked at the influence scheme of tech billionaires, and on top of that, new political alliances, among other things due to genocide fractures.

We’d like to do more reporting, but we’ve discovered why journalists take umbrage at bloggers: An originally-reported story takes roughly four to ten times the effort of a blog post of commentary and analysis. Consider this example that we published earlieer an example from the Columbia Journalism Review :

In this economic environment, greenlighting time-consuming, in-depth reports that may get less traffic than lighter-fare articles has become increasingly rare. A recent report by Mother Jones in which a senior reporter worked four months as a corrections officer exemplifies this tension. The massive 35,000-word report exposed corruption in private prisons but conservatively cost $350,000 to produce and only brought in $5,000 in banner ads.

Now we admittedly have a leg up in that Naked Capitalism readers savor meatier content. But even so, original reporting doesn’t just take much more gumshoe work than analysis of news. It also involves pursuing leads that often don’t pan out. And it also can require meaningful hard dollar expenses, such as paying lawyers to pursue FOIAs.

So that is a long winded way of saying that original reporting is costly but more and more important as the mainstream media is both running into budget constraints and becoming less intrepid generally.

Again, our target for original reporting is $45,000. We are already $1,730 towards that goal.

So those of you who have contributed already, thanks again for your generous support, and we look forward to those NC fans who have just found out about the fundraiser to help make the site more successful.

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

You can also send a check (we like checks! no processor fees!) in the name of Aurora Advisors Incorporated to

Aurora Advisors IncorporatedPO Box 110105Brooklyn NY 11211-0105

Please also send an e-mail to [email protected] with the headline “Check is in the mail” (and just the $ en route in the message) to have your contribution included in the total number of donations.

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