Ya ever notice that the personalities and political positions of individuals and institutions involved in public life tend to…transform under the crucible of national politics?
Former conservative gatekeepers become current FDR stans. Think tanks dedicated to “the principles of the American Founding” devolve into anti-Enlightenment troll farms. Political parties organized around libertarianism get weak in the knees around tariff-loving executive-power junkies and illiberal public-health conspiracists.
For 57 glorious years and counting, Reason has never changed its spots, regardless of whichever politician was sending thrills down commentators’ legs. Libertarian yesterday, libertarian today, libertarian tomorrow. It’s why you wonderful people send us a half-mil-plus during our annual fundraising Webathon, and it’s why—THIS JUST IN!!—beloved Reason donors Kerry and Helen Welsh (no relation to anyone named Matt) are offering up one last matching grant, of $25,000. That means your next $25,000 of donations will, through alchemy, be magically spun into $50,000.
WON’T YOU PLEASE DONATE TO REASON RIGHT THE WELSH NOW?!
Gnaw through that $25,000 and we should for a second time blast through our fundraising goal (of $600,000), set our next sights on beating last year’s (inflation-adjusted) sum of $630,000, and even on upward through our all-time highs. Here’s my numerical plea to you tighter-money fence-sitters: The lowest rung is still a rung! Fifty bones still gets you a one-year subscription to Reason Plus, as well as the delicious satisfaction in knowing that you are further diffusing any risk that we might wake up one day and give statism a chance.
Other magazines of political opinion have come only very lately to the nonprofit, user-supported funding model, and so are susceptible not just to audience capture but the mercurial whims of a single donor. Reason has been doing this since the 1980s; has a collegial, supportive, and engaged Board of Directors, and is able to convert this experience into stability.
One of the questions we didn’t use for our ask-us-anything Webathon edition of The Reason Roundtable came from decades-long subscriber Jim, who wrote (in part): “The HBO show Succession is a master class in how NOT to handle leadership transition. In contrast, from the outside, Reason‘s handoffs between editors-in-chief Virginia Postrel to Nick Gillespie to Matt Welch to Katherine Mangu-Ward-looked almost boringly competent and drama-free. That’s rare in media….What concrete lessons about succession planning (good and bad) should other organizations take from Reason’s experience?”
This very Webathon is one key answer to that question. Donor diffusion AND generosity help us be your consistent libertarian voice in the hilariously inconsistent political journalism and commentary world, avoiding the types of neck-snapping ideological pendulum swings one sees in and directly around, say, the White House. Here’s to another 57 years!
PLEASE DONATE TO THE FLAGSHIP LIBERTARIAN MAGAZINE RIGHT THE HECK TODAY!
