Thanks to your loyal support, we’ve succeeded in hitting our first two targets: funding our critical IT infrastructure and sustaining the comments section. Our tech maven Dave and our comments cat-herders katiebird and semper loquitur deeply appreciate that you have demonstrated that you value their essential roles in keeping this enterprise in top form.
This year, we have a new goal: funding the new Coffee Break feature. Even though some mention that they miss Lambert’s dry wit, his rapier-sharp phrasemaking, and his many interests, such as gardening and permaculture, we’ve also had quite a few tell us how much they appreciate the depth and range of topics from our new Coffee Break writers. So if you are as chuffed about their contributions as we are, please go straight to the Tip Jar to express your appreciation.
Thanks to your great responses so far, we are already $5,055 towards our new goal! We’ve also hit 411 donors, and are making good progress towards our donor objective of 1100.
Although Lambert was difficult to replace, we are fortunate to have been able to recruit several talented writers. Getting them sorted was a difficult process, but we have five great new features after this transition.
We now have Haig Hoveaness’ Armed Madhouse exploring the many dark corners of the military enterprise, from things that work (bribery, drones, indoctrination via entertainment) to ones that don’t so much (laser weapons). Nat Wilson Turner was following the NYC primary before most of the media caught on to its importance, along with chronicling the malign intent of tech overlords such as Larry Ellison and Alex Karp, taking down the Abundance shills, and how influencer politics and Gaza are breaking down traditional political alliances. Curro Jimenez has examined the implications of Israel’s attack on Qatar for the Gulf States, of the erosion of Europe’s welfare state, and Latin America as the laboratory for America’s planned new world order. And Haig also performs the indispensable task of providing Links on Sundays.
But we would not have gotten through this major transition without reader support. Despite Lambert giving the site generous notice, his departure still represented a crisis because he had been producing so much of our content, as well as playing an important role in the running of the site. Conor and Nick both stepped up with offers of how to fill in his regular slots. But even though that would work on paper, it would still leave us dangerously thin in case Something Happened.
So I was faced with: could I find enough excellent writers to have a new feature, Coffee Break, since there could only be one Water Cooler? And could the site raise enough additional money to support all that new content? Remember that Lambert raised funds independently for Water Cooler, so aside from the hosting and other site overheads, the Naked Capitalism funding did not include Water Cooler.
When I put out the word that we were looking for new contributors, it was gratifying to see how many responses we got from high-caliber candidates. This is a real testament to this community, that so many professional or near professional writers are keen to work with a highly engaged audience.
KLG was so brave as to take up a weekly slot on top of his every-other week long article, which given that he also has an important day job, is a very big commitment. Our moderator semper loquitur volunteered to provide a Sunday movie feature.
Nevertheless, we then had to screen and select from new candidates. We actually had to do that twice before we were so lucky as to have Nat Wilson Turner and Curro Jimenez respond to our appeal.
So this is a long-winded way of saying that since we now have a strong new team in place, the process of getting here had a lot of nail-biting and rending of garments along the way.
So we hope that those of you who contributed to Water Cooler as well as those who have come to like and appreciate our exciting Coffee Break/Sunday movie writers will chip in for these exiting new in-depth pieces. We now have five individuals (including semper loquitur) bringing their considerable experience and learning to a new frontier of topics. And they have all said they appreciate and benefit from the intense engagement with readers, and the careful readings and additional information they routinely provide. This demonstrates how the commentariat has created a virtuous circle, of rigor about information and reasoning (and appreciation of acute phrasemaking) inspiring authors to produce even more top-notch articles.
So please toast their arrivals and help keep Curro well plied with cigars by going to the donation page and giving generously!
Readers have chimed in with notes of support:
From Susan R:
I’m sending more this year because you should get what I’m no longer sending to Lambert plus a little more for the new writers you’ve hired. I’m pleased to read all of them. Thank you for keeping us informed no matter how depressing the world situation is now. We also really enjoy the many interesting articles on subjects that we would not have thought about unless we stumbled upon them at NC. We are sharing articles with friends almost every day and some of them have started to read NC, too. Lately everyone wants to be well informed it seems.
And Ben Panga:
CJ I greatly enjoy your articles here, thank you. And thank you also for sharing a bit of your backstory.
Cigars deserved!
From JohnnyGL:
A welcome opening salvo, Haig! Albeit a sobering one.
Looking forward to more of your work.
And Bugs:
Bravo Nat. I was waiting for your analysis, sensed it building in your tweets, and I was not disappointed. Magisterial post. Thanks for bringing your point of view to Naked Capitalism.
And .Tom
Idk this movie. And this time last week I didn’t know that feature either but now I do thanks to NC’s great Sunday Morning Movie and thanks to semper loquitur. Go donate to the fundraiser now if you haven’t already.
And steve k:
thanks for the incredible work and bringing in the new group of writers
So to help support these great new writers (and KLG taking a bigger load), please give now. Whether it’s $10, $100, or $1,000, all help meet our goals.
We have set a target of $34,000 which frankly only partly covers the total cost of all of this high-quality content. So please do your part and chip in pronto! The Tip Jar tells you how to give by check, credit or debit card. And if you do send a check, please send an e-mail to yves@nakedcapitalism.com with “Check is in the mail” in the subject line so we can include it in our running tally.
Again, please tell these wonderful authors how much you value their work by going straight to the donation page and digging deep! As many have said, in an ever-crazier, more heavily propagandized world, we need even more sharp eyes focusing on what is really happening, and these new talents are doing a lot of informational heavy lifting to meet this challenge.
