Donate Today To Kick Off Reason's Annual Webathon

Today is Giving Tuesday, and that means the start of Reason‘s annual webathon week, in which we ask you—our readers, listeners, and viewers—to donate to support Reason‘s award-winning journalism. 

This year we’re hoping to raise $400,000. Your hard-earned, inflation-adjusted dollars can help us meet that goal. There is some pretty cool swag on offer at various giving levels, including Reason stress balls (obvious), digital subscriptions (packed with good stuff), a Reason calendar (because time is a flat circle), NPR-style tote bags (including one that says “Taxation Is Theft” for our anarchist pals, or a logo tote for the minarchists). At the top tiers we’re offering invitations to Reason Weekend for first-timers and/or lunch with an editor (pick me! I’m great at eating lunch!). 

You can get the skinny on swag at the donation page.

Donations of any size will get you special access to our annual Ask Us Anything edition of The Reason Roundtable. Include proof of your donation when you submit a question to [email protected] and you’ll skip the line. Questions (and donations) must be in by Wednesday morning to make the cutoff.

The goodies are just icing on the cake, of course. All week, you’ll be seeing posts from Reason editors about why you should support Reason‘s important work. I want to kick off the week by talking about something that sets Reason apart from the competition: We do real, honest-to-Lanny investigative journalism. Because sometimes it takes a freedom-minded worldview to see stories that others don’t.

Reporter C.J. Ciaramella is our Freedom of Information Act ninja, and he manages to get ahold of an astonishing amount of material for free through sheer cussedness and persistence. But you’ll be shocked—shocked—to learn that sometimes governments aren’t too keen on handing over evidence of their own incompetence or worse. Cash helps speed those queries along, and it pays for lawyers when the process stalls. 

We sent Associate Editor Christian Britschgi into the D.C. metro system to report on the system’s slow, tragic decline. Sure, train tickets only cost a couple of dollars a pop, but we had to factor in the possibility that we’d have to send in a rescue team after him. 

And this month we sent three reporters to Kennedy Space Center to talk with a NASA engineer about why its Artemis rocket is blowing through budgets and deadlines at a time when SpaceX is finding cost-saving measures like reusing its boosters instead of chucking them into the ocean. For their upcoming documentary on NASA’s wasteful spending, we used a pair of Canon C70 Cinema cameras with telephoto lenses to capture footage of Artemis. Without your support for gear and travel, we would have had to rely on NASA for stock footage and second-hand interviews. Stay tuned for that video, but here’s a sneak peek:

@reasonmagazine

If it’s permissible, even patriotic, to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on #space exploration and travel, surely we can allow a small group of wealthy people to spend their own money on the same project? Visit Reason.com to read our special edition space issue. ???? #spacex #nasa #rockets #science

♬ Fly Me To The Moon—Otto Stories

Finally, sending Senior Editor Stephanie Slade into the bowels of the national conservative movement isn’t cheap: Buy her plane tickets—and maybe the booze in which she will drown her sorrows after she files one of her thoughtful, deeply informed pieces on the right’s (and the left’s) alarming authoritarian turn. 

These stories and so many more would be impossible without your support. This week we’re asking for donations, but we know you already support Reason in so many ways, including with your holiday shopping (buy from our gift guide or use Amazon’s charity link to generate tiny kickbacks for us when you shop), with your subscriptions, and simply by signing up for, consuming, and sharing our content. Reason is a 501(c)(3), by the by, which means a little bonus on your taxes as well when you donate.

Reason’s aim is to produce high-quality journalism about the vital role that free minds and free markets play in making a better world. Thank you for helping us do that, in whatever way you can. 

The post Donate Today To Kick Off Reason‘s Annual Webathon appeared first on Reason.com.