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The American Prospect faces a challenge: how to shift their business model so supporters don't have to bail them out with another $1.2 million but maintain their identity as a wonky, liberal, policy focused non-profit magazine. "If we didn't know this before, we've learned it in the last seven weeks: the Prospect has a remarkable franchise among folks who care about smart policy analysis," Jay Harris, the Prospect's publisher, told The Atlantic Wire. "I think that's got to be the core. That's what people contributed money to rescue." That said, expect to see some changes to their business model soon. The Prospect announced at the end of April that it needed $500,000 to survive through May and another $700,000 to make it into the fiscal year beginning in July. After a public effort aided by their readers, alumni, and competitors, they announced Wednesday they'd exceeded their immediate need. "Even having been pulled out of this hole, we really don't want to go back in again any time soon," Harris says. "In terms of initial decisions, you'll probably hear within a month or so."
But what should those decisions include? Washington City Paper's Will Sommer suggested Wednesday that the new model might "include making the magazine less of the snoozefest it has been over the past few years (current top story on their site: 'A Paralyzed G-20'), even as rival liberal mags like Mother Jones have gotten into reader-bait like Game of Thrones super-PAC ads."