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In a world where the mainstream media is becoming more and more interested in soundbites to the detriment of thoughtful, researched news reporting, we like to remind our readers just how unique our mission here at LifeSite is, and how seriously we take it.

If there is one fundraising letter that I hope you read in full this campaign, this is it!

I want to thank everyone who has already donated to our Christmas Campaign. We are grateful for your support.

However, with only a week left to go in our campaign, and a steep $212,000 left to raise, we feel it is important that you know just who you are supporting, and how important our work is for the pro-life and pro-family movement.

You can make an online donation by clicking here. You can also donate by phone or mail.

Many of our readers are surprised to find out that LifeSite consists of a team of over 25 full and part-time journalists, editors, and support staff dedicated to authentic, investigative journal

I strongly urge you to scroll to the bottom to see the photos of our entire team. I think you’ll find the size and scope of our team eye-opening. 

On top of that, there are the graphic designers, programmers, and other tech experts we contract with who ensure that our website looks as professional as our journalism, and can handle the growing flood of over 35 million visitors a year.

LifeSite resists the temptation to go the easy route taken by so many publications these days, to become just another site that copies headlines and stories from around the Internet and reposts them to get clicks.

We strongly believe in doing things a little more old-school.

LifeSite has developed personal relationships with hundreds of pro-life leaders and activists all over the globe who constantly feed us news tips and information. Our full-time paid journalists then follow up, investigate, research, and report on what they find.

In some cases, this means not just hours, but days, or even weeks of research – sometimes just to get to the bottom of a single story. In many cases, our journalists have quickly realized that the mainstream media got a story on our issues completely wrong, and by digging deep have been able to correct the public record.

In some dramatic cases, such as the Development & Peace scandal in Canada, the Synod on the Family, the backlash against the sex-ed curriculum in Ontario, and our Catholic Relief Services investigations, our journalists have spent even months digging through massive amounts of often-confusing information, making dozens of phone calls and interviews, writing numerous articles, and putting those articles through more revisions than I care to remember.

We constantly remind our journalists to “pick up the phone.” Which is to say: go straight to the source.

We don’t blindly trust what’s on the Internet or in other media, even other pro-life or conservative media. We dig, verify, and then, when we are confident that we have found the truth of the matter, we report it.

We routinely hold stories for days, simply because we haven’t yet been able to get a response from some important person or organization involved, and we’d rather get the story right, than be the first one to report on it.

Certainly, this kind of journalism is significantly more costly and time-consuming than just relying on cut-and-paste ‘journalism.’ But experience clearly shows that, in terms of long-term results, it’s totally worth it! In fact, in a lot of cases, if LifeSite wasn’t investigating the truth of a matter of huge importance to the pro-life and pro-family movement, nobody else would…because there’s nobody else able to do it!

Of course, not every story requires this kind of investigative work, and in many cases it’s just a matter of publishing easily verifiable information and getting it out to our readers.

But it is our work on these deeper, more difficult stories that established LifeSite’s reputation as a totally unique and reliable pro-life and pro-family news agency.

Oftentimes, the investigation we must do, and the reports we must write are difficult. But we know you count on LifeSite to report those hard truths.

Because that is our mission: to provide a unique, pro-life and pro-family perspective on the events and issues of our time. Our reporting investigates the events of our day through the lens of the Gospel.

And because of our dedication to truth, and putting in the time and resources necessary to get all the facts related to the issues we cover, we have become the leading news service for the pro-life and pro-family movement.

This isn’t a position we take lightly. Rather, we are humbled by the role we play in the culture war, and we approach our work as missionaries – not as employees with a job to do. And every penny we raise through your support goes back into our reporting.

Our journalists work from home, with salaries more befitting missionaries than those trying to raise families. Because we are an online news agency, we don’t need expensive offices or facilities, or have the overhead required for printing and mailing publications.

People are constantly amazed when they learn more about the scope of the work we do, and just how little funding we require to do it. But we are only capable of this because of the generous support of our readers, just like you!

This Christmas, we are hoping that you will help us to reach our absolutely minimum campaign goal of $250,000 before Christmas.


With these funds we are able to continue providing you with the original and investigative reporting on issues related to life, family, and culture on an international scale that have made us the leading news agency in the pro-life and pro-family movement.

We believe in this mission. We are dedicated to this mission. And, most importantly, we are dedicated to providing you with the truth you won’t hear elsewhere concerning the most important issues of our day.

God bless you, and thank you for your support!

For life and family,


John-Henry Westen
Editor-in-Chief
LifeSiteNews.com

From top left: Steve Jalsevac, John-Henry Westen, John Jalsevac, Clare Maagad
From top left: Patrick Craine, Ben Johnson, Lisa Bourne, Jon F
From top left: Lianne Laurence, Peter Baklinski, Steve Weatherbe, Andy Parrish
From top left: Elizabeth Morgan, Dustin Siggins, Michael O’Brien, Meghan Mulherin
From top left: Gualberto Garcia Jones, Matthew Hoffman, Andrew Guernsey, Jeanne Smits
From top left: Drew Belski, Hannah Westen, Andrew Smith
From top left: Michelle Kaufmann, Guilherme Ferreira Araújo, Maike Hickson