Crosscut is nearing the end of its Fall Membership Drive, our biggest such effort of the year. We are a community-supported nonprofit news site, so we depend on Members to keep paying the bills and to keep those stories flowing. I hope you'll consider renewing or joining. It's easy to do online, donations are tax-deductible, and Members receive benefits such as parties, forums, and ticket discounts.You can pay in monthly installments, if you wish.
Among the pleasures of these drives, at least for me, are giving out prizes each day from our drawings. The winner of two tickets to the Merce Cunningham Dance Legacy Tour at the Paramount Theatre, Oct. 27, is William Roach of Seattle. The drawing today (Oct. 6) is for six (make it a party, or just go a lot yourself) tickets to the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, a leading contemporary art museum in the region.
We will give away one more Kindle if you join this week (ending Sunday), and the grand prize is an iPad 2. If you join at the $75 level and above, you will receive a spiffy Crosscut tote bag.
Another pleasure is hearing from new Members, who often send along gratifying words about how much Crosscut means to them. Here's what David Pippin wrote to me yesterday: "I love Crosscut, and so do my people across the country that I send articles to. Thanks for putting together a great team of people, producing such good content!"
And here is what Eric Schinfeld, the new president of Washington Council for International Trade and federal policy director for the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, sent along:
Everyone has their “this is the first email I open in the morning” email. You know the one: it gives you links to various news stories from the past day that you were too busy to read because of the six meetings you went to. In today’s busy, just-give-me-the-Cliff-Notes business world, that’s what you need. But when that email not only comes with news but also in-depth, insider analysis, you know that you’ve found your “morning email.”
That’s what Crosscut is for me: that first reference to make sure I’m up-to-speed on the news that I need to know. It’s also the news that I wouldn’t get anywhere else – stories from around the Pacific NW that don’t make it into the big newspapers; and I need to know those stories because they’re going to impact me, my community, and the future of this region. That’s why I support Crosscut.
I hope you have your own reasons for liking what we do, and understand the need for developing a thriving "next media" for this region. We would all welcome your donation and value you as a Member. Thanks for listening, and thanks for helping. As one of our writers, Doug MacDonald, put it: "Crosscut's vitality is our common cause."
