Make This North Dakota TV Sports Reporter Go Poor — For A Good Cause

For one more hour, KELO sports reporter Jim Madalinsky has promised to donate one dollar of his own salary for every new Facebook "like" he gets to Minot River flood relief. (That's in North Dakota). Go see if you can make him regret that decision. For some background, read the email below.

My name is David Brown, I'm a news reporter at KELO-TV, the CBS affiliate in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I'm a former (and still somewhat current) sports guy who wanted to pass along this noble, yet hilarious story:

My colleague, our weekend sports anchor Jim Madalinsky, used to live and work in Minot, North Dakota. As part of a recent KELO-TV company policy, all of our on-air personalities created Facebook fan pages to drive up viewer traffic. Jim was at 95 or so "fans" when he announced at 2 PM on Friday, July 8th that he would donate $5 for every new "like" he got past 100 for that day to Minot flood relief. Little did he know the power of social media…

He quickly amassed more than 500 fans and had to lower his pledge from $5 for every "like" to $1 and extended the deadline to Sunday night. It still didn't matter….

As of now (8:30 PM on Sunday), he has 2,205 fans, obligating him to donate more than $2,000. Myself and other friends of his around Sioux Falls are pitching in to help cover the costs so he doesn't completely piss away his salary / sell his car / have to live on food stamps.

He's ending the "likes" tonight (Sunday) at 10 PM. But I encourage others to keep on liking him. Here's a link to his page: http://www.facebook.com/KELOJimMadalinsky