Take a Gamble With Us on Food

For a contribution of $60 or more, we will send you the beautiful Feast, a book of our most popular articles about food this year. Dear Reader, I'm writing to check in with you as the year comes to a close and to see if you would be willing to take a gamble with me about the future of AlterNet. This move is a bit unorthodox. Instead, I should be writing to you about the unnerving political climate, AlterNet's economic situation, and our accomplishments and challenges over the past year. But you will hear that soon enough. Today, I'm being very specific. I'm asking you to take a risk. AlterNet intends to launch a new 'Food' special coverage area* purely on reader support. "Food 2010" will be dedicated to uncovering the ills of the industrial food system and highlighting the great work that's being done to produce a healthier and more sustainable food approach. Most important, it will be initiated by you. That's never been done before. It will take $50,000 to launch and keep the Food project going for the first year. That amount will fund an editor, investigative articles, great food writing, a food newsletter and "Food Action" -- a way to make your voice heard and leverage your political power. Will you help us launch "Food 2010?" Your Name on the Food 2010 Honor Roll We are very excited about this unprecedented initiative. We will list the name of everyone who gives us $30 or more on a special reader-supported honor roll web page. All food articles will be linked to our honor roll of reader-supported journalism. And if you can afford $60, we will send you our hot mini-book: Feast -- AlterNet's Best Food Articles for 2009. (**More information below.) Your excitement this year about food content was extraordinary. Time and again, the article most read in a day or week was about food. You understand the old adage, "you are what you eat." That is, if you can figure out what you're actually eating. These days 90 percent of the food Americans consume is processed. Increasingly, agribusinesses are failing on food safety, purposely engineering our meals to be addictively high in sugar, fat, and salt while not protecting the environment or workers' rights. But at the same time, there's also a growing movement centered in sane food politics and policy, including farmers, producers, distributors, cooks and eaters dedicated to healthy, sustainable, and local food systems; we know many of you are involved. So will you come on board and be the first on your block to help launch much-needed AlterNet Food coverage? If you do, you will be a pioneer, breaking new ground. We know frequently the best journalism is reader-supported journalism, and you will be proving it. Don Hazen Executive Editor, AlterNet.org P.S. *We are creating this new content area because Food is one of the most basic and important components of our lives. It's central to community and family and touches on health, corporate accountability, the environment, and water policy. It also deeply hits personal and political veins. It touches all the bases. P.S.S. **For a contribution of $60, we will send you the beautiful Feast, a book of our most popular articles about food this year. This book is a special one-of-a-kind item which will not be offered for sale anywhere.

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