Wow! Yesterday I posted that Josh Marshall was seeking contributions to fund a trip to blog New Hampshire; today he announced that he’s raised $4,864, far more than he needed:

The point here was never to hit the Granite State in, you know, princely Howard Fineman-fashion — you know, gold-plated quill pen, vellum notebook, personal food-taster, etc. All that I need is transportation to Manchester, a room at a mid-range hotel, a rental car to drive around the state, and some money for gas and miscellaneous expenses.

With the jacked-up hotel rates in Manchester in primary season, probably just the hotel and the rental car for ten days, plus taxes, will likely run a couple grand.

So here’s what I intend to do. I’m swamped working on a couple stories today. So this is tentative. But here’s my plan. I’m going to put together a budget. Then I’m going to go through the list of contributors and find the people who sent in contributions after the amount required under the budget had been reached. I’m going to contact those people individually. And they’ll have the choice of either having their money refunded or having it put into the general fund for the support of the site.

Congratulations to Josh — it looks like patronage on this scale might be more viable a model than even I believed.