Hooray! 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 generous responses, we’ve hit our first six targets: essential IT , bonuses to our loyal guest writers, continuing expanded Links, supporting the comments section, providing burnout prevention, out our tiny team, and funding to extend our reach.

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 new writers on board.

Readers have told us that one of the things they particularly value about Naked Capitalism is its no-holds-barred coverage of financial, economic, and increasingly geopolitical news, and the power dynamics that drive them.

Even though all of the wonderful readers 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.

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?

The reality is that all the the previous targets are essential to keep the site going. For instance, rewarding our regular writers isn’t just to recognize their above-and-beyond the-call-of-duty dedication; it also helps in bringing new writers on board. And many of you have said that Links and Water Cooler are “must have” features.

Readers have told us that one of the things they particularly value about Naked Capitalism is its no-holds-barred coverage of financial and economic news, and increasingly of the power dynamics that drive them. From Nippersmom:

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

And Biologist:

Heading to tip jar now for 100$. Thanks a lot all for the work of creating this truly exceptional public space. Particular thanks for the reporting on Latin American issues. Please stay strong despite attacks all around on open press (i.e. take breaks to stay sane).

And Michael M:

Just adding my thanks to all the other people’s, for your site and the insights of you and your people. I read your site every day, and it is my main antidote for the discouraging disaster of our mainline media, and the corrupt and disdainful Wall Street liberalism and neocon poison of our country. I am sad at how even my more well-meaning friends seem all right with taking sources like the New York Times as their major news source.

And Scott M:

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

And Jan C:

I’m sending a donation check for $100. Naked Capitalism is one of my primary news sources. Thank you more than I can say.

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. A guest speaker at CalPERS said its disclosures on fees and costs, which CalPERS made only under duress, had shaken other public pension funds into getting more serious about trying to contain them. Hubert Horan’s Uber series has led to reporters finally questioning the ride-sharing company’s fundamentals. We have continued to cover how private equity does not boost public pension returns even as they keep pouring more funds into the strategy, despite more and more media coverage of price hikes and service degradation, most of all in the critically-important health care industry.

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. He has continued to dog terrible public health information as Covid has surged bigly again, and more recently, the fight over mask bans. Nick as indicated by a reader above has covered Latin America, primarily from an economic angle, such as Mexico’s pushback on GMO corn, as well as his continued interest in digital currencies as the Trojan horse for a war on cash. Conor has provided extensive commentary on how the shifting power dynamic in Europe are coming out of economic pressures, as his new offering on the Draghi policy scheme shows. KLG has covered many examples of how questionable scientific and medical research practices have broader implications.

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 $4,030 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 Incorporated
PO Box 110105
Brooklyn NY 11211-0105

Please also send an e-mail to yves@nakedcapitalism.com 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.”