This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 827 donors have already invested in our efforts to shed light on the dark and seamy corners of finance. Join us and participate via our Tip Jar or WePay in the right column or read about why we’re doing this fundraiser and other ways to donate, such as by check, on our kickoff post.
Thanks to your generous and speedy responses, we’ve met our first four targets: upgrading site support and hosting (which should lead to faster loading times and quicker resolution of reader problems), nice ex-post facto honoraria to our loyal guest bloggers, travel/conference expenses and coverage, and vacation and partial weekend coverage. Let me stress again that these are all things that your donations have and continue to make possible. And at 827 donors, we’re over 80% of the way to our goal of 1000 contributors for this fundraiser.
Our fifth goal is hiring an intern. Yes, I know, the press would lead you to believe that interns are free, since it is full of stories of college students pulling all sorts of strings to get internship positions at places like Conde Nast only to find they wind up getting coffee and making copies.
Now there are two dangers in generalizing this to Naked Capitalism. First, this site is not Conde Nast. It does not have a lot of resume oomph (which is what students are looking for if they aren’t getting real money) for the overwhelming majority of college students. Second, I’ve been told that journalism graduate students would be a much better fit, in that they’d value the credential and they’d almost certainly have relevant skills (among others, having worked in a journalistic environment and thus being able to crank out decent quality copy on short notice). And I did try putting up a notice for an unpaid internship at Columbia Journalism School last year, and got no takers. So it is clear Naked Capitalism would have to pay the going rate for interns, which is $15 to $20 an hour.
Some of the things an intern could help do that will help make the site more relevant and effective:
Necessary site work
Proofreading
Quick turnaround research
Keeping track of basic statistics
Being on “shit happens” alert when I am off the grid
Site improvement/outreach
Taking a beat (a news topic that is likely to keep recurring, like fracking) and post on that
“Editing”: asking intern, with various topics in mind, to reach out to some new voices and work them to get posts
Handling all Twitter/social media stuff… setting goals and asking intern to achieve them
Implementing podcasts (I wanted to do them this year and the fundraiser last year paid for the equipment, which I have duly procured, but there is audio editing involved, and I’ve been unable to find the time to learn how to do that)
So there is LOTS to do. I’d like to raise $8500, which would cover the cost of an intern for most of the year plus a modest expense budget for them. We are already $1650 towards this 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.
