A year or two ago, one of our donors decided not to renew their Friend of BSR gift ($5/month or a one-time donation of $60 or more) and explained why: they would rather support organizations that they believe have a more direct stake in preserving democracy.
And that’s fair. Everyone must make their own decisions about charitable giving. Some people are passionate about rescuing elephants; some support bone marrow registries. Others donate for famine relief, reproductive justice, education, mutual aid, medical research, the ACLU, or the ASPCA. Every gift is needed.
But I can’t help saying that if democracy is your priority…you’re going to need journalists.
And that does not just mean the White House press pool. As I noted in my recent editorial, art is inherently political. Every day, we at BSR affirm and practice the right to free speech and a free press. Artists and arts journalists fight polarization and increase civic and social engagement by creating windows on other people’s experiences and encouraging cultural dialogue. Artists and arts journalists get us out of the comment section and into a shared experience in a real-world space, whether that’s a theater, gallery, parade, protest, museum, library, concert hall, or classroom.
After the election, my colleague Wendy Rosenfield (BSR’s former editor) flagged a statement by professor and contemporary philosopher Christopher Robichaud, a senior lecturer in ethics and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He observes America’s rightward shift and says there’s no single “hobby horse” or technical explanation for Harris’s loss. The problem, he says, is cultural: America has “abandoned a politics of decency and respect and has embraced instead a politics of resentment, revenge, false nostalgia, and bullying.” He says Trump’s second win will have decades of profound effects for all of us.
“This would be a time for the arts, broadly understood, to step in,” Robichaud writes. “The arts can change hearts and minds.”
BSR is working on that. We have more than 7,000 weekly subscribers (and counting), and this year, BSR is on track to top 200,000 readers worldwide—no small feat for a remote, part-time team of seven and our freelance writers. But less than one quarter of one percent of those readers donated to BSR this year—a number that is equal to about one percent of our subscribers.
Journalism is hard work, especially now. But funding it is even harder. If we can attract thousands of subscribers and hundreds of thousands of readers, we think it’s fair to say that we should stay in the business. If you agree, your gift makes it possible.
Thank you to everyone who has already given this year! You are a small but mighty group of champions for local journalism.
