If you've been reading The American Prospect or TAP Online, or both, you probably recognize that we offer something a little different from a lot of progressive sites or blogs. I think Adam Serwer captured our attitude well in an aside in a blog post a couple of months ago: "Maybe there's a political advantage in highlighting just how completely nuts the right's most prominent spokespeople sound," he wrote, "but I think all it does is distract from the case liberals need to be making for reforming the health-care system."I'll admit that sometimes we too get distracted by the latest nuttiness from Sarah Palin or Michael Steele. It's hard not to. But the Prospect will never lose sight of the main goal: a more just society, and all the policies, and therefore all the politics, that will get us there. We don't just make the case for reforming the health-care system, the financial system, or restoring civil liberties -- we also try to help our readers understand how those reforms would work, what matters, who's blocking change, and what's really possible if we think beyond the narrow constraints of Washington.
And just to use the example of health care for a moment, we go a lot deeper than just the question of whether a health plan will have a public option: We dig into questions such as whether reproductive choice will be covered in the health plan and explore such complexties as the lobbying on both sides and the racial disparities in the current health system and how the plans would address them.
While you know that the Prospect is the source for these stories of policy-meets-politics, you may not know that the magazine and Web site are a nonprofit organization. We don't have a billionaire backer -- we depend on some foundations but mostly on the support of readers who value what we do. And what we do includes not just the coverage we provide but the careers we help to launch: those of Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein in the recent past, and Dana Goldstein, Adam Serwer, and Tim Fernholz today.
This has been an extremely difficult year for all nonprofit organizations, including the Prospect. Foundations have seen their endowments shrink by up to one-third, and many progressive donors seem to think that with George W. Bush gone, everything's fine and their support is not needed. But you know that everything's not fine, and while this is a moment of tremendous opportunity, it's also a time of great risk. The work the Prospect does to help engage people in these consequential public debates, avoiding the distractions, is more essential than ever. To enable us to continue programs like our Writing Fellows, or to allow us to dig even deeper into these complex stories, or to improve this site, we ask that you consider joining those readers who are also donors to the Prospect.
--Mark Schmitt
