Your Donations Help Protect <em>Reason</em>'s Editorial Independence

Mark McDaniel

More than 1,200 of you have donated over $330,000 to the Reason webathon this year.

First: Holy wow. You have wildly exceeded our expectations. We cannot thank you enough. Seriously. Wow, dudes.

You might be tempted to focus on the dollars. And believe me, your willingness to hand over those hard-earned smackeroos means we are going to be able to buy a lot of plane tickets, public records printouts, books, photos, software, and coffee.

But that huge number of donors is incredibly significant, too. Because for Reason, more donors means more editorial freedom. Unlike lots of other magazines, Reason doesn't have a single big funder. No sugar daddy, if you will. The fact that no one person's whims dictate our editorial line (not even mine!) is a big part of why we've been able to maintain our quirky, consistent, controversial, big tent approach for the last 50 years—even as our competitors have struggled (and occasionally failed) to preserve their principles and dignity in a changing media landscape.

To thank you for helping Reason remain free and independent, we will put away our tin cup at midnight tonight and go back to our regularly scheduled business of:

1. FOIAing Dungeons & Dragons creator Gary Gygax,

2. doing a big roundup of Christian libertarians,

3. explaining the glories of testosterone supplementation,

4. outlining the pros and cons of heroin shortages,

5. getting the state out of marriage,

6. debunking police propaganda,

7. sticking up for the sale of online ads for prostitution,

8. advocating for the abolition of the popular vote,

9. defending Houston from slander about its zoning laws,

10. defending dudes who play video games instead of working,

11. getting sassy with Massie,

12. sticking up for spending cuts

13. and all the other stuff we couldn't do without your support

Thanks to you glorious weirdos, we can continue to provide the kind of gloriously weird content you won't find anywhere else.

If you are moved to donate before midnight tonight, your gift will still count toward our totals for the Webathon 2017. We hope you'll join more than 1,200 of your fellows to make this our biggest, most bonkers online fundraiser ever.

#Webathon