Thank You for Making Reason’s 2014 Webathon the Most Successful Ever By Far!

You suffered through the blue pop-up ads, you
endured the extra bold paragraph at the bottom of each blog post,
you withstood more than two dozen direct pitches (only one of which
featured
Lobster Girl), and most importantly, you made our
7thannual Hit & Run Webathon smash all previous
donation records like
HULK SMASH GRAMMAR.

We asked you for $200,000—having only broke through the
$100,000 barrier
for the first time last year—and you gave us a stunning
$223,000. Halfway through this past week I flippantly asked for a
total of 1,000 different donors, us having never drawn north of
700, and you coughed up…1,167. An anonymous donor promised up
to
$25,000 worth of matching grants for new or new-levels-of
money, and you zoomed through that in just a couple of days. And,
importantly, you gave along with your donations a bunch of very
valuable feedback (above and beyond the
beloved comments snark), which we are digesting, acting
on, and laughing out loud at (I mean with, of
course)!

At at time of
turmoil and woe for magazines of political opinion, you have
made it immeasurably easier for us to go boldly forward into our
second half-century of giving you kick-ass journalism and
commentary in defense of Free Minds and Free Markets. We are
humbled by your generosity, and accept it as a challenge to get a
helluva lot better during this
Libertarian Era of ours.

I wanna give some special shout-outs to the Reason people not
named Gillespie or Welch ho have been crucial in the Webathon’s
(and Reason’s) success: Managing Editor Katherine
Mangu-Ward (pictured)—who first started interning at Reason at
the ridiculous age of 19 and has since gone on to tell
you people not to vote, champion private education and
space
travel, while dying the ends of her hair purple—organized the
raw material for many of the Webathon posts, and saw to it that the
rest of the print-magazine shop hit its marks (you can’t
wait for our next issue, laying out the Libertarian Policy
Agenda of 2015-16!). Chief Financial Officer Jon Graff whipped the
whole project into shape; Melissa Mann, Amy Pelletier, Cynthia
Bell, and Jennifer Kambara handled all sorts of fulfillment and
communication and brainstorming responsibilities; Katie Hooks made
it work on social media, and of course, Publisher Mike Alissi

did not write a terrible op-ed in the Washington Post,
and instead did what he always does, which is everything.

Plenty of other people made plenty of other contributions,
most notably YOU, so thanks again, and see you this time next
year!