How will the AGR spring fund drive conclude?

This week is the fourth and final week of the Asheville Global Report’s Spring fund drive. During the past three weeks we have raised roughly $1,300; less then a quarter of what we typically raise during one of our biannual fund drives.

While we hope to commit more funds this year to expanding both the content and reach of the paper, what is at stake this week is more fundamental. What is at stake is the basic financial stability of one of the nation’s most acclaimed independent news sources.

In a time when corporate media is set on protecting corporate interests, above the interests of everyday people like you concerned, free-minded individuals must put resources and energy into developing media free of the fog created when corporate interests rule the newsroom.

Lexus is not going to take out a $10,000 dollar ad with us next week, because the news we bring you, our readers, each week from around the world about oil industry scandals, global warming, and air pollution does not fit with the sales pitch for that new car.

Gap, Old Navy, Nike, and Victoria’s secret (who uses prison labor to sew their alluring lingerie) are not going to come through for us this week either. No, they have seen too many stories about sweat shops, unions, and anti-globalization protests worldwide to ever approach us – and we are certainly too revolted to approach them.

Caterpillar heavy equipment is not going to bail us out with a full color ad with a lot of yellow and light on the red. No, their yellow bulldozers (bloodstains scrubbed clean) will not appear advertised in our paper, and their cold green cash will not appear in our accounts.

What this leaves us with for support is a handful of small, locally owned businesses (that mostly struggle to get by and deserve patronage in order to have some edge on the mega-shops of suburban wasteland) and, you, our faithful readers.

In the next few weeks we hope to start carrying original reports from the Palestinian territories, but we cannot do this without a successful fund drive.

We hope to have our half-hour radio show, that airs each week on WPVM and Free Radio Asheville, to air on over twenty stations around the country. Will we have time to do the leg work to make that a reality if we are scrabbling for money to print the current week’s paper?

In two weeks we will be placing ten new news boxes around Asheville, and the western North Carolina region. Will we have papers to fill them?

Though the AGR has printed steadily for over five years, we remain a financially unstable organization. This in not due to mismanagement. Spending at the paper is amazingly low for what we accomplish each week.

The trouble is that the media mergers of the past 50 years have left it nearly impossible to run a small newsroom and compete with the giant likes of the New York Times or conglomerates like Gannett who own hundreds of daily newspapers, that share news room resources.

Simply put, if this paper is to sustain itself it has to grow. At our current funding levels there are no assurances that we will have money to print during any given month, a situation we often describe as swinging from limb to limb. It is doubtful that the paper would survive a financial fall.

At a circulation of 20,000 split between national subscriptions, and regional free distribution, the Asheville Global Report could be one of the most influential papers in the nation. We would be able to hire journalists from around the world to bring our readers first hand reports. We would have the resources to do in depth investigative journalism that has been banished from the corporate newsroom, that are simply beyond our resources right now.

Perhaps most critically, we would be able to devote our full energy to producing this publication. But to get from here to there, it is you our readers who must decide that the information found in the AGR will continue to reach open minded individuals such as yourselves and those who may be unfamiliar with independent media.

Take a moment to contribute to a different future then the multinational corporations are foisting on the people of the world; please take a moment to contribute to the future of independent media in America — support the AGR spring fund drive.

Thank you,

Asheville Global Report editorial collective