“Among the unexpected sources of support for the magazine was the #fediverse—the collection of decentralized Mastodon servers that soared in popularity following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. Many comments on the GoFundMe page mention that the donors learned about the Observer through #Mastodon—where the Texas Observer was one of the first journalistic outlets to set up its own server, @jamescanup said.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/29/texas-observer-closing-gofundme via Guardian

#TexasNeedsAnObserver #mastodon #journalism

Texas Observer journalists raise $270,000 in bid to save publication

Magazine’s editors asked board not to lay off anyone for a month if staff raised $200,000 after Friday’s vote to cease publication

The Guardian

The Guardian: TXO and Fediverse are besties 🥰

#TexasNeedsAnObserver

@TexasObserver "“The generational passing of the baton may actually be happening through Mastodon,” Canup said."
@MaQuest I was shocked to not have heard of TO during my 14years of very active Twittering. Was one of my early follows here on Mastodon thoughand glad to have found it
@BikeMrown Yay! #Solidarity from UK! I was on Twitter for just under two years. Never heard of TO while there. Today I have 40+ notifications on this reply to their toot. I've gone viral! 

@TexasObserver @jamescanup Looking forward to the time when this kind of quote would have Twitter framed as something like:

the legacy social-silo "Twitter"

@TexasObserver @jamescanup

Just a small note that calling the fediverse a “collection of Mastodon servers” is a bit like calling the internet “a series of tubes”

@scottmatter @jamescanup we'll do our best to do better when we write about it :)
@scottmatter I always get an image of a ragtag bunch of starships in space.
@TexasObserver @jamescanup this is the way! You take us seriously, we got your back.