Well, when I went looking for a cheeky illustration for this post about the fortunes of VTDigger, I didn’t plan on discovering Diggerland, “the one and only construction theme and water park in the U.S.!” (Exclamation mark theirs.) But that’s the internet for ya. The real Diggerland, complete with opportunities to “Drive, Ride & Operate specially engineered, real construction machinery,” is located in a New jersey exurb of Philadelphia, which sounds about right.

So no, our favorite nonprofit “print” news organization hasn’t opened a theme park. Not yet. But the idea doesn’t seem completely farfetched given the sweaty, sweaty nature of Digger’s current fundraising campaign.

If you haven’t visited VTDigger in the last several weeks, you’ve missed a huge number of fundraising messages competing for space with a shrinking number of actual news stories. You’ve missed messages directly from staff reporters, which rings ethical alarm bells among ink-stained wretches. You’ve missed pitches that tie support for Digger to the provision of heat and sustenance, which strikes me as a tad aggressive. The implicit message is if you don’t support VTDigger, you don’t care about the poor among us. Which is nonsense.

To me, if you can’t attract enough support for solid journalism as a worthy investment, then little tricks like “give today or someone will be left in the cold” or “give now or someone’s gonna go hungry” aren’t going to make up the difference. Also they just feel uncomfortably tacky.

But if the folks at Digger are a little desperate, a perusal of their latest IRS filing will tell you why.

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