A while back a friend of mine who owns a ven­ture cap­i­tal firm asked me if the peo­ple on the “angel investor” list on the right got some own­er­ship, like in a real busi­ness. I told him that no, “investors” was just a term that I used. But after the notes and the sup­port from all of you, I real­ize that every­one who donates really is a stake­holder and you do have some kind of own­er­ship. The div­i­dends aren’t checks for your bank account, but the cre­ation of some­thing new, a jour­nal­ism that owes its sole alle­giance to the read­ers. While I may be the guy in the field, it’s you, the read­ers, donors and sup­port­ers, who are build­ing a new, new jour­nal­ism (apolo­gies to Tom Wolfe) through your patron­age and read­er­ship. If this adven­ture is suc­cess­ful, I sin­cerely hope more jour­nal­ists take this route and begin to see the Web, and espe­cially blogs, as a pri­mary out­let instead of an adjunct or a mar­ket­ing tool for their “real” work. Their cred­i­bil­ity will derive from the trust of the read­ers and a bub­bling, robust and inde­pen­dent medium will be the result, as pro­fes­sional as any­thing that came before it, if not more so.
Yes­ter­day, Wired​.com fea­tured Back to Iraq on its front page with just these ideas in mind. The response was tremen­dous, with more than 3,300 unique vis­i­tors, almost $875 raised in a sin­gle day and inter­view requests from some major news media. The more atten­tion the bet­ter, but I’ll admit to being a lit­tle uncom­fort­able being the story instead of report­ing on it. The out­pour­ing of sup­port has been just incred­i­ble, and I’m extremely grate­ful to every­one who has donated. Thank you. Total dona­tions are up to $3,879.80.
Today, I’m busy updat­ing the donor data­base and set­ting up the list­serv that will carry the bonus updates and allow in-the-field inter­ac­tion. Some of you will notice I’ve dropped the Ama­zon pay­ment method on the right. While it was very con­ve­nient and accounted for $708 in dona­tions, it never gave me any email addresses and if you used Ama­zon to let me know you donated, I never got a sin­gle note telling me. So I’m drop­ping it and hop­ing that peo­ple who donated will con­tact me directly. If you donated yes­ter­day via Ama­zon and you have one of the fol­low­ing con­fir­ma­tion num­bers, please send me your email so I can add you to the list.

700105350544
700101310504
700103389454
700107339414
700106309464
700107378474
700104348434
700102318474
700100387484
700105367484
700100376474

Thanks, every­one, for your sup­port and advice and well wishes. This whole endeavor is look­ing more promis­ing by the day, and it appears that late March or early April will be my depar­ture date. The cur­rent plan is a month in the field and then back to New York. Of course, that could change with the cir­cum­stances, and I’m hop­ing to stay longer. But for the moment, that’s where it stands.