Mother Jones (magazine)
Encyclopedia
Mother Jones is an American independent news
News
News is the communication of selected information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience.- Etymology :...

 organization, featuring investigative and breaking news reporting on politics, the environment, human rights, and culture. Mother Jones has been nominated for 23 National Magazine Awards and has won six times, including for General Excellence in 2001, 2008, and 2010. In addition, Mother Jones also won the Online News Association Award for Online Topical Reporting in 2010 and the Utne Reader
Utne Reader
Utne Reader is an American bimonthly magazine. The magazine collects and reprints articles on politics, culture, and the environment from generally alternative media sources, including journals, newsletters, weeklies, zines, music and DVDs...

 Independent Press Award for General Excellence in 2011.

With a paid circulation of 200,000, Mother Jones magazine is the most widely read liberal publication in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Monika Bauerlein
Monika Bauerlein
Monika Bauerlein is the co-Editor of Mother Jones magazine. Bauerlein was promoted to the position in August 2006, following the departure of Russ Rymer; previously she was the magazine's Investigative Editor...

 and Clara Jeffery
Clara Jeffery
Clara Jeffery is a co-editor of Mother Jones magazine . Jeffery was promoted to that position in August 2006, following the departure of Russ Rymer; previously she was the magazine's Deputy Editor, a position she had held for four years...

 serve as co-editors. Madeleine Buckingham has served as Chief Executive Officer and Steve Katz as Publisher since 2010.

The magazine was named after Mary Harris Jones, called Mother Jones, an Irish-American trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...

 activist, opponent of child labor
Child labor
Child labour refers to the employment of children at regular and sustained labour. This practice is considered exploitative by many international organizations and is illegal in many countries...

, and self-described "hellraiser." She was a part of the Knights of Labor
Knights of Labor
The Knights of Labor was the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s. Its most important leader was Terence Powderly...

, the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...

, the Social Democratic Party
Social Democratic Party (United States)
The Social Democratic Party of America was a short-lived political party in the United States, established in 1898. The group was formed out of elements of the Social Democracy of America , and was a predecessor to the Socialist Party of America, established in 1901.-Forerunners:Following the...

, the Socialist Party of America
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...

, the United Mine Workers of America, and the Western Federation of Miners
Western Federation of Miners
The Western Federation of Miners was a radical labor union that gained a reputation for militancy in the mines of the western United States and British Columbia. Its efforts to organize both hard rock miners and smelter workers brought it into sharp conflicts – and often pitched battles...

. The stated mission of Mother Jones is to produce revelatory journalism that in its power and reach informs and inspires a more just and democratic world.

Mother Jones is published by the Foundation for National Progress, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. Mother Jones and the FNP are based in San Francisco
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

, with other offices in Washington D.C. and New York.

Key editors

For the first five years after its inception in 1976, Mother Jones operated with an editorial board, and members of the board took turns serving as managing editor for one-year terms. People who served on the editorial team during those years included Adam Hochschild
Adam Hochschild
Adam Hochschild is an American author and journalist.-Biography:Hochschild was born in New York City. As a college student, he spent a summer working on an anti-government newspaper in South Africa and subsequently worked briefly as a civil rights worker in Mississippi in 1964...

, Paul Jacobs
Paul Jacobs (activist)
Paul Jacobs was a pioneering activist, journalist, and co-founder of Mother Jones magazine. In 1966 he signed a tax resistance vow to protest the Vietnam War....

, Deborah Johnson, Jeffrey Bruce Klein
Jeffrey Bruce Klein
Jeffrey Bruce Klein is an investigative journalist who co-founded Mother Jones in 1976.For its first issue he found a piece that won a National Magazine Award. He forced the resignation of Ronald Reagan’s chief foreign policy advisor, Richard V. Allen, at the 1980 Republican National Convention...

, Mark Dowie, Amanda Spake, Zina Klapper, and Deirdre English
Deirdre English
Deirdre English is the former editor of Mother Jones and author of numerous articles for national publications and television documentaries. Currently, she teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and is a faculty mentor at the Center for the Study of...

.

In 1981, Deirdre English was named the magazine’s first editor-in-chief, a position she held until 1986. A strong feminist, she brought women’s voices to the fore in the magazine and oversaw considerable coverage of Central America
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...

, the Sandinistas, and the Contras. She also brought in Barbara Ehrenreich
Barbara Ehrenreich
-Early life:Ehrenreich was born Barbara Alexander to Isabelle Oxley and Ben Howes Alexander in Butte, Montana, which she describes as then being "a bustling, brawling, blue collar mining town."...

 as a regular columnist.

Michael Moore
Michael Moore
Michael Francis Moore is an American filmmaker, author, social critic and activist. He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. His films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also place in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries...

, who had owned and published the Flint-based "Michigan Voice" for ten years, followed English and edited Mother Jones for several months. After being fired in the fall of 1986, Moore sued Mother Jones for US$2 million for wrongful termination, but settled with the magazine’s insurance company for US$58,000 – only US$8,000 over the initial offering. Moore felt that he did not have a chance to shape the magazine. Many of the articles that were printed during his time as editor were articles that had already been commissioned by Deirdre English. An article by Paul Berman
Paul Berman
Paul Berman is an American writer. His articles have been published in numerous periodicals, such as: The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review and Slate...

 about Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...

, which was slightly critical of the Sandinistas
Sandinista National Liberation Front
The Sandinista National Liberation Front is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas in both English and Spanish...

, (Mother Jones generally supported the Sandinistas) was one of those articles commissioned by English. Moore did not want to print it, but the magazine had made a commitment to Berman. The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...

columnist Alexander Cockburn
Alexander Cockburn
Alexander Claud Cockburn is an American political journalist. Cockburn was brought up in Ireland but has lived and worked in the United States since 1972. Together with Jeffrey St. Clair, he edits the political newsletter CounterPunch...

 believed the disagreement over the Berman article was the sole reason of the firing, but Hochschild and others at the magazine denied this.

For his part, Moore claimed in his 1989 documentary film Roger & Me
Roger & Me
Roger & Me is a 1989 American documentary film directed by Michael Moore. Moore portrays the regional negative economic impact of General Motors CEO Roger Smith's summary action of closing several auto plants in Flint, Michigan, costing 30,000 people their jobs at the time and economically...

 that he was terminated because he put the face of Ben Hamper
Ben Hamper
Bernard Egan "Ben" Hamper is a Michigan-based writer. He was born in Flint, Michigan from a Catholic family that had many former employees of General Motors amongst its members. Hamper also worked for General Motors in Michigan for several years and wrote for Michael Moore's Flint Voice...

 on the cover of an issue, an act of defiance after being refused an opportunity to write about the GM plant closings in his hometown of Flint, Michigan
Flint, Michigan
Flint is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and is located along the Flint River, northwest of Detroit. The U.S. Census Bureau reports the 2010 population to be placed at 102,434, making Flint the seventh largest city in Michigan. It is the county seat of Genesee County which lies in the...

.

Books about Moore by Jesse Larner (Forgive Us Our Spins: Michael Moore and the Future of the Left) and Roger Rapoport (Citizen Moore: The Life and Times of an American Iconoclast) extensively cover Moore's difficult relationships with people during his brief editorship.

Douglas Foster, an Emmy-winning TV producer and a writer who had covered labor issues for Mother Jones in the 1970s, followed Moore. Foster’s magazine featured regular columns from Molly Ivins
Molly Ivins
Mary Tyler "Molly" Ivins was an American newspaper columnist, populist, political commentator, humorist and author.-Early life and education:Ivins was born in Monterey, California, and raised in Houston, Texas...

, Roger Wilkins, and Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government....

. During his tenure, the magazine excerpted Randy Shilts
Randy Shilts
Randy Shilts was a pioneering gay American journalist and author. He worked as a freelance reporter for both The Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations....

' groundbreaking book, "And the Band Played On
And the Band Played On
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic is a nonfiction book written by San Francisco Chronicle journalist Randy Shilts, published in 1987...

: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic."

In the fall of 1992, Jeffrey Bruce Klein
Jeffrey Bruce Klein
Jeffrey Bruce Klein is an investigative journalist who co-founded Mother Jones in 1976.For its first issue he found a piece that won a National Magazine Award. He forced the resignation of Ronald Reagan’s chief foreign policy advisor, Richard V. Allen, at the 1980 Republican National Convention...

, one of the original editorial team, returned as editor-in-chief, bringing an intense focus on Washington politics, including extensive coverage of Newt Gingrich
Newt Gingrich
Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich is a U.S. Republican Party politician who served as the House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995 and as the 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999....

, campaign finance, and the tobacco industry. He was a frequent guest on radio and television shows, spearheaded many collaborations between the magazine and website, and brought comedian Paula Poundstone
Paula Poundstone
Paula Poundstone is an American stand-up comedian.- Early life :Poundstone was born in Huntsville, Alabama, and her family moved to Sudbury, Massachusetts. Poundstone attended Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, but dropped out to pursue a show business career...

 on as a regular columnist.

Roger Cohn succeeded Klein as editor-in-chief in 1999. Cohn brought to the forefront environmental and social justice stories from around the country. It was during his tenure that the 25-year-old Mother Jones won a 2001 National Magazine Award for General Excellence.

Russ Rymer
Russ Rymer
Russ Rymer is an author and freelance journalist with articles in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, and others. His first book, Genie, a Scientific Tragedy, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and awarded with the Whiting Writers' Award...

 was named editor-in-chief in early 2005, and under his tenure the magazine published more essays and extensive packages of articles on domestic violence (July/August 2005), and the role of religion in politics (December 2005).

In August 2006, Monika Bauerlein
Monika Bauerlein
Monika Bauerlein is the co-Editor of Mother Jones magazine. Bauerlein was promoted to the position in August 2006, following the departure of Russ Rymer; previously she was the magazine's Investigative Editor...

 and Clara Jeffery
Clara Jeffery
Clara Jeffery is a co-editor of Mother Jones magazine . Jeffery was promoted to that position in August 2006, following the departure of Russ Rymer; previously she was the magazine's Deputy Editor, a position she had held for four years...

 were promoted from within to become co-editors of the magazine. Bauerlein and Jeffery, who had served as interim editors between Cohn and Rymer, were also chiefly responsible for some of the biggest successes of the magazine in the past several years, including a package on ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil
Exxon Mobil Corporation or ExxonMobil, is an American multinational oil and gas corporation. It is a direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil company, and was formed on November 30, 1999, by the merger of Exxon and Mobil. Its headquarters are in Irving, Texas...

's funding of
climate change "deniers" (May/June 2005) that was nominated for a National Magazine Award for Public Interest reporting; a package on the rapid decline in the health of the ocean (March/April 2006), and the magazine's massive Iraq War Timeline interactive database.

The first post-baby boomer editors in the history of Mother Jones, Bauerlein and Jeffery have used a new investigative team of senior and young reporters to increase original reporting, web-based database tools, and blog commentary on MotherJones.com. The cover of their first issue (November 2006) asked: "Evolve or Die: Can humans get past denial and deal with global warming?"

David Corn
David Corn
David Corn is an American political journalist and author and the chief of the Washington bureau for Mother Jones. He has been Washington editor for The Nation and appeared regularly on FOX News, MSNBC, National Public Radio, and BloggingHeads.tv opposite James Pinkerton or other media...

, a political journalist and former Washington editor for The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...

, is bureau chief of the magazine's newly established D.C. bureau. Other D.C. staff include Washington Monthly contributing editor Stephanie Mencimer, former Village Voice correspondent James Ridgeway
James Ridgeway
James Ridgeway is a prominent American investigative journalist.-Career history:Ridgeway began his career as a contributor to The New Republic, Ramparts, and The Wall Street Journal....

, and Suzy Khimm from The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...

.

MotherJones.com

In addition to stories from the print magazine, MotherJones.com offers original reported content seven days a week. During the race In the 2008 election campaign, MotherJones.com was the first to report John McCain's "100 years in Iraq" comments. Also in 2008, MotherJones.com was the first outlet to report on Beckett Brown International, a security firm that spied on environmental groups for corporations.

Winner of the 2005 and 2006 "People’s Choice" Webby
Webby Awards
A Webby Award is an international award presented annually by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for excellence on the Internet with categories in websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile....

 Award for politics, MotherJones.com has provided extensive coverage of both Gulf wars, presidential election campaigns, and other key events of the last decade. Mother Jones began posting its magazine content on the Internet in November 1993, the first general interest magazine in the country to do so. A number of innovative uses of this new medium would follow. In the March/April 1996 issue, the magazine published the first Mother Jones 400, a listing of the largest individual donors to federal political campaigns. In the print magazine, the 400 donors were listed in order with thumbnail profiles and the amount they contributed. On MotherJones.com (then known as the MoJo Wire) the donors were listed in a searchable database.

In the 2006 election, MotherJones.com was the first to break stories on the use of robocalling, a story that was then picked up by TPM Muckraker and The New York Times. The Iraq War Timeline interactive database, a continually-updated interactive online project, was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2006. The site has also produced extensive special reports on the U.S. prison system and the state of the planet’s coral reefs.

Mother Jones Radio

Launched on June 19, 2005, Mother Jones Radio was heard on Air America Radio
Air America Radio
Air America was an American radio network specializing in progressive talk programming...

Sundays at 1:00 p.m. EST. The one-hour show was hosted by Angie Coiro and featured interviews and commentaries inspired by stories from Mother Jones. Mother Jones Radio ended its production in early 2007.
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