ETS! gets an astonishing number of letters, e-mails, and phone calls from people who assume we have a staff: you know, like a real newspaper. I suppose it's a compliment, that we have a sufficiently professional-looking publication, that gets out every week, that folks assume the capitalist model they're most familiar with. But it's a much more remarkable story: we all have day jobs (or are looking for them...). ETS! is entirely produced by volunteers. We pay a minimal stipend for layout work, and for some of the artwork; otherwise, everything you see is unpaid, and it's entirely supported--at $600 a week in expenses for printing and distribution--by the community. By all of us.

I write this reminder because the "professional" model doesn't encourage people to participate, and that's what we want. It's what we need. We need donations, we need volunteers, to survive. It's how we've put out a weekly publication without faltering for over two years. If you value what we do, please consider a donation to help support it; it goes straight into printing more. And part of our goal is to provide space for more voices from the community. In recent weeks we've gained one column (Nature and Politics, on sabbatical this week--oddly, the authors of N&P and Stump Talk are both on the road cross country this week) and lost two (American Newspeak, which Wayne Grytting is unfortunately no longer writing, and Media Watch, which is on what may be a permanent hiatus.) We'd love to hear from people willing to write regularly about media, about labor, about any number of issues we could be covering if only someone would regularly write it for us. This is your invitation.

Happily, we've filled two major "staff" volunteer positions as new folks have come in to help out; Mike McCormick (206-525-9998) is now coordinating ad sales, and Michael Gross--also an ETS! advertiser and conduit for a recent major donation we're very, very pleased to have gotten--is the new business manager. Many thanks to Valerie Jean and Sean Knight, respectively, who filled those roles and are now doing other ETS! volunteer work instead (Valerie is focusing on fundraising and editing the calendar and history sections).

Speaking of which, no mention of money would be complete without plugging the Halloween bash ETS! is throwing on Friday night, October 30, at the Speakeasy Cafe. The Speakeasy is very generously donating their space on a prime night- -come on down and join the fun! With the election only days away (a confluence of holidays that cannot be a coincidence), ridicule is clearly in order. We'll see ya there!