Donate a Laptop to an Authentic Journalist

Make sure our students are well armed!

By Al Giordano

November 10, 2002

Dear Colleagues,

With only six application days left for scholarships to the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism, we’d like to involve all our readers in helping to get our beginning journalists and J-Students started.

Today we ask you, if you possibly can, to donate a laptop computer to a member of the next generation of authentic journalists, our scholarship winners.

NOTE: ABSOLUTE FINAL DEADLINE FOR COMPLETED SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATIONS WILL BE FRIDAY NIGHT – NOVEMBER 15 - AT MIDNIGHT CALIFORNIA TIME.

(We do suggest, kind students, that you don’t wait until the absolute last minute: A telephone, Internet or power failure, or “a dog eating your homework” will not save you from this deadline!)

Many applicants got their questionnaires in early, and we’ve been reading them carefully. We’re really excited about working with these people! But many are not in yet! And we can’t wait to read all the applications and name our full and partial scholarship winners.

ALSO: BEYOND AT LEAST SIX FULL SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS, WE HAVE EXPANDED THE NUMBER OF PARTIAL SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS.

AT LEAST 20 STUDENTS, MAYBE MORE, WILL BE INVITED TO ATTEND THE TEN DAY SCHOOL OF AUTHENTIC JOURNALISM, FEBRUARY 10TH TO 20TH, 2003, ON THE MEXICAN CARIBBEAN!

One thing we have noticed, though, is that a number of our most qualified applicants don’t have an essential weapon for reporting on the drug war and democracy from Latin America: A laptop, also known as a portable computer.

Not to worry: Nobody’s going to be chosen based on whether she or he has a laptop or not! Of course not! (I didn’t have a laptop until December 1999 – thank you Angelica Foundation – and I think that many of the best of the next generation of authentic journalists don’t yet have one either! The authentic wind comes from below!)

But now we’re going to sweeten the scholarship pot, with your help, kind readers.

Narco News today begins its DONATE A LAPTOP TO AN AUTHENTIC JOURNALIST campaign!

The holiday season is coming. Perhaps you’ve already got a laptop and are thinking of buying a new one – or hinting strongly to your loved ones that you would like a new one! So ask them for the new one and donate your old one to this campaign! Or maybe you’d like to buy a holiday present – a laptop! – for one of our star Authentic Scholarship Winners!

We remind: Narco News started with no more than a single laptop, and no budget. With your donation of a laptop, you could be giving birth to such a project.

The laptop that you donate may end a drug war, may save lives, may make sure that somewhere in a country called América that voices not heard are suddenly heard!

No matter where you live in the world, we will, on our end, take responsibility for getting the laptop from your hands to América’s next generation of Authentic Journalists.

If you donate a laptop in good working condition, we are going to arm one of our students with it. If 24 laptops are donated, we will unleash 24 well-armed Authentic Journalists upon all América… North, Central and South.

Remember: People from all over América and the world will be attending the “OUT FROM THE SHADOWS: Ending Drug Prohibition in the 21st Century” summit in the city of Mérida on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.

All of our journalism scholarship students will be there, reporting the news from this historic event to you, our readers. You can bring the laptop with you, or we can arrange that somebody else who is coming will bring it for you.

If you haven’t registered yet for the OUT FROM THE SHADOWS conference, do it early, and get a discount. That information is at this link:

http://www.stopthedrugwar.org/shadows/

If you can’t attend this first-ever hemispheric gathering, send your laptop!

If there are more students than laptops, we will award the laptops based on factors of merit, talent, and of geographic and economic need. But we hope that, with your help, some dynamic authentic journalists who came without a laptop, will go back home with one, and use it to intensify our reporting on the drug war and democracy in our América.

We are also investigating, with 501c3 non-profit sponsors, the possibility of granting you a tax-exemption for your generous donation of a laptop, for which you will be sent, on request, a receipt.

Please: ONLY LAPTOPS IN GOOD WORKING ORDER ARE OF ANY USE! They can be PC or MAC, but they must work. Our technicians will inspect them for any computer viruses, homing devices, or other problems, and arm them up with the appropriate software for our journalists to go out there and make history.

In this era of commercial media simulation, a single laptop can break down the information borders. That’s all Narco News has ever been: a Laptop plus an Authentic Journalist equals big trouble for the professional simulators, enemies of authentic democracy, and drug warriors.

So, kind readers, you who have responded twice to our appeals – the first time, for the Drug War on Trial defense fund, that we won; the second time, for our own laptop, in which in after just 16 days last summer you put Narco News back in action – now, for only the third time since we began publishing on April 18, 2000, we are asking you for material support: Not for money this time, but, rather, for a laptop. We will pass it along to one or more of our brilliant and talented students, and reproduce the Narco News project in as many locales as you, Civil Society, choose with your generosity.

Does someone want to give you a gift this holiday season, and you don’t know what to ask for?

Tell them “A LAPTOP COMPUTER!”

Do you want to GIVE a gift this holiday season, and do you want to give a gift that can really change the world? Give A LAPTOP COMPUTER… new or used, but in good condition. And we’ll put it in the hands that can do the most with it toward our common goals.

The chosen ones from our 350 applicants – the ones that win the Narco News Authentic Journalism Scholarship, who you will meet in the beginning of December – will thank you. And all América will thank you.

If you have any questions about this special laptop request, or how to do it, please write the team at Salón Chingón – salonchingon@hotmail.com

(If you haven’t gotten an application for this Authentic Journalism Scholarship yet, write to that same address… but the clock is ticking… Friday, Midnight, is the deadline; don’t miss it!)

SCHOLARSHIP APPLICANTS: Stay tuned to Narco News this week for further instructions, and for a special lecture in our School of Journalism’s I.F. Stone Assembly Hall about one “journalism review” rag that recently betrayed journalism and committed career-destroying ethical lapses to boot! Our J-School is for all our readers, not just for our lucky “Authentic Twenty” who will be attending the courses in person. You’ll all be interested – especially you journalists out there – when “Izzy Stone Night” at Narco News uncloaks!

LAPTOP OWNERS: Now you know what to ask the loved ones for your holiday gift: a new laptop. And please donate the old one to us! This is a “win-win” situation, no?

Okay. Here we go!

“To write the truth, to defend the weak against the strong, to fight for Justice…”

– Isador Feinstein Stone (1907-1989)

From somewhere in a country called América,

Al Giordano
Publisher
The Narco News Bulletin

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