Today is the final day of the South Seattle Emerald's membership drive. As you undoubtedly know, the SSE is a local online publication with the stated mission "to amplify the authentic narratives of South Seattle." In its three-and-a-half year existence, the Emerald has added a vital, passionate, and dedicated voice (voices, really) to Seattle's ever diminishing media landscape.

The obvious thing to say is that the more publications a city has the better off the city is. But that's just sort of a sentimental thing to say. I don't actually believe that anyone believes it. Yes, we generally benefit from a multiplicity of perspectives, but the world is different now. Time is different now. Perspectives are inescapable. Thanks to social media, anyone on any side of any ideology can say any stupid, inflammatory shit they feel like saying—and be reasonably assured of being congratulated for it. The world is glutted with expression and increasingly bereft of accountability.

Also vanishing, as you know: the means for publishers to generate the resources required to support professional-quality reporting, writing, editing, analysis, expertise, memory, accountability, and interest in a consistent, ongoing way. Everyone's an expert the week before elections. Someone needs to fill in the months, and years in between.

A newspaper/magazine/zine/blog has to be about something to add more than it subtracts, and the Emerald very clearly knows what it's about, and what it's about is important. And more to the point, as co-founder/Editor-in-Chief Marcus Harrison Green's post from earlier today made clear, the SSE needs money to survive. I know, so does everyone. But if you have a little to spare, and you have ever read the Emerald, or despaired of the shortage of news outlets in Seattle, or just want to be a mensch, you should go donate to them before the day is over.