To Our Readers and Supporters:
Hey, have I got a deal for you, meaning the good folks supporting ScheerPost! Our new fiscal sponsor, Community Partners (CP), provides ways for you to receive a tax deduction for any donation to ScheerPost, whether by credit card or check. Network for Good, a platform used by CP, issues tax receipts directly to donors who contribute by credit card for any amount. If someone makes a donation by check, it’s tax deductible regardless of the amount, but CP issues a tax receipt only for check donations of $250 or more.
We are proud of this new affiliation because CP is a highly regarded California fiscal sponsor of many worthwhile grassroots groups, including some involved in expanding voter access, increasing higher education opportunities, addressing food insecurity and many others. CP will also take over guaranteeing the labor rights of our employees, the hardy band of writers and editors who have brought ScheerPost nearly 12 million views in less than four years from our origin in the despair of the pandemic.
This plaintive but necessary appeal is from me, Robert Scheer, a lifelong journalist and now publisher of ScheerPost, where my wife Narda Zacchino, a 36-year veteran of the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle, is the editor-in-chief. Neither of us takes a salary, nor do we expect to. ScheerPost is not our retirement plan but we are unfortunately spending parts of it to continue to run the site as it is now. ScheerPost is a way for both of us to mentor a new generation of young journalists to carry the torch we have spent almost our entire lives carrying. We want to further expand their opportunities by allowing our team to go out and produce more for the publication and thus, more for you.
I still make a good living as a professor of communication at USC after both of us spent a combined 80 years working as professional journalists, mostly at the Los Angeles Times, where I was a national correspondent and Narda rose from reporter to vice president and associate editor, not to mention a four-time Pulitzer Prize judge. Our experience and the wisdom we are bestowing upon our staff is undeniable.
Our core staff is made up of five current and recent graduates of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. They are a group of young people who don’t have a Social Security check to bail them out when their funds run short. Nor do the independent writers, including some with a lifetime of great achievement but lousy compensation at a moment when traditional journalism for accomplished journalists is on life support.
From our decades in traditional newsrooms, we participated in an era of responsible and at times contrarian journalism. That requirement of a free press is now threatened by a broken business model in mainstream journalism, a space we are attempting to fill with this alternative venture. Additional funding is vital to continuing to support the coverage of even the most controversial topics, and there were certainly plenty of those in the past three-plus years of running ScheerPost. From Julian Assange to the war in Ukraine, from Cop City protests to Big Tech censorship, from the national wave of organizing workers to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, we do not shy away from the issues that truly matter and deserve the spotlight.
Despite Big Tech’s algorithmic limitations on the independent media space, our staff will continue to fight against it on all platforms, building on our social media infrastructure that already brings in hundreds of thousands of impressions and followers and represents a place where our younger staff hopes to connect our age-old wisdom with their tech savvy generation.
Let me be clear that I am asking for support, not begging. As Chris Hedges, who has been allied with me in this venture from the beginning, writes at the end of his weekly column, “Scheer runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget.” Narda and I make the commitment that ScheerPost will never collapse, even if the money to prevent that doesn’t come quickly.
We have devoted our professional lifetimes to reporting the truth to inform readers, maintain media integrity and help keep our democracy on an even keel. Today we navigate through roiling waters of fake news, blatantly biased reporting by mainstream corporate-owned media and serious challenges to our democracy as a result.
Please help us keep our ship afloat by contributing what you can through our new fiscal sponsor, Community Partners, earning the annual tax deduction as a benefit to you while our content can continue to benefit our growing number of readers from around the world. Our work is needed now more than ever.
You can also make a donation to our PayPal or subscribe to our Patreon.
All mailed donations by check are eligible for a tax write-off, however only those amounting to $250 or more will receive a tax receipt from Community Partners.
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