Mother Jones (magazine)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Name of Magazine | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Editor | Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery |
| Categories | Politics |
| Frequency | Bimonthly |
| Circulation | 233,000 |
| First Issue | February 1976 |
| Company | Foundation for National Progress |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Website | Mother Jones |
| ISSN | 0362-8841 |
Mother Jones is an independent, nonprofit magazine rooted in what it terms progressive political values and known for its investigative reporting. In general United States standards it is a magazine of Left-wing politics orientation. The winner of a 2001 National Magazine Award in General Excellence, Mother Jones has been nominated for National Magazine Awards nine times and has won four times.
With a paid circulation of 233,000 (the average for the first half of 2006), Mother Jones is the most widely read progressive publication in the United States. Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery serve as co-editors.
The magazine was named after Mary Harris Jones, a.k.a Mother Jones (born Mary Harris during 1837 in Ireland, died 1930 in USA), a union activist, active opponent of child labor, anarchist, and self-described “hellraiser.” Its stated mission 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.
Contents |
[edit] History
From its first issue in February 1976, Mother Jones has focused on investigative stories that are underreported by the mainstream media.
The magazine has devoted extensive coverage to the underpinnings of the Iraq war - from the small group that laid the groundwork for an invasion during the 1970s oil crisis to the Office of Special Plans, the group the George W. Bush administration set up within the Pentagon to make the case for invading Iraq through allegedly selecting and manipulating intelligence reports. Another cover story detailed how the war in Iraq has fueled anti-American sentiments around the world and turned Al-Qaeda into a global movement. In August of 2006, MotherJones.com launched "Lie by Lie: The Mother Jones Iraq War Timeline," a searchable database of the key developments and statements relating to the Iraq invasion, with links to original source materials.
The magazine’s May/June 2005 issue revealed that ExxonMobil donated more than $8 million between 2000 and 2003 to organizations whose goal is to try to debunk the theory of global warming. The September/October 2003 issue intrepreted the Bush administration’s actions in regard to the environment. Mother Jones has also turned its investigative eye on the tobacco industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the campaign-finance system, Washington politics, and scores of other issues.
Mother Jones magazine was conceived in early 1974 when Adam Hochschild, Richard Parker and Paul Jacobs first met in Jacobs’ San Francisco living room to begin planning a new magazine. The founders thought the country was ready for a magazine of reporting that would focus some of its investigative energy on the great unelected powers of the time — multinational corporations.
In September 1977, the young magazine made a splash with the publication of Mark Dowie’s investigative story, “Pinto Madness.” The article revealed that the Ford Motor Company had, through its own testing, uncovered a serious safety problem with the gas tank design of its popular Ford Pinto subcompact car. Mother Jones obtained and published an internal cost-benefit-analysis in which Ford weighed the costs of a recall against the anticipated cost of settlements in cases where passengers would be killed or injured. Eight months after the story appeared, Ford recalled 1.5 million Pintos for repairs – at the time, the largest auto recall in American history. “Pinto Madness” won many awards, including a National Magazine Award.
The nonprofit Foundation for National Progress publishes Mother Jones magazine and MotherJones.com, produces Mother Jones Radio and directs the Mother Jones Internship Program.
[edit] Key editors
For the first five years of its history, 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, Paul Jacobs, Deborah Johnson, Jeffrey Klein, Mark Dowie, Amanda Spake, Zina Klapper, and Deirdre English.
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, the Sandinistas, and the Contras. She also brought in Barbara Ehrenreich as a regular columnist.
Michael Moore followed English and edited Mother Jones for several months. After being fired in the fall of 1986, Moore sued Mother Jones for wrongful termination, settled with the magazine’s insurance company for $58,000, and used part of the settlement as the seed money for his first documentary film, "Roger and Me."
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, Roger Wilkins, and Ralph Nader. During his tenure, the magazine excerpted Randy Shilts' groundbreaking book, "And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic."
In the fall of 1992, Jeffrey Klein, one of the original editorial team, returned as editor-in-chief, bringing an intense focus on Washington politics, including extensive coverage of Newt Gingrich, 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 on as a regular columnist.
Roger Cohn succeeded Klein as editor-in-chief in 1999. Cohn brought to the fore 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 was named editor-in-chief in early 2005, and under his tenure the magazine published extensive packages of articles on climate change "denial" (May/June 2005), domestic violence (July/August 2005), and the rapid decline in the health of the ocean (March/April 2006). The climate change package was nominated for a National Magazine Award for Public Interest reporting.
In August 2006, Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery were promoted from within to become co-editors of the magazine. They have used a new investigative team of senior and mid-career 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?"
[edit] MotherJones.com
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.
Winner of the 2005 and 2006 “People’s Choice” Webby Award for politics, MotherJones.com has provided extensive coverage of both Gulf wars, presidential election campaigns, and other key events of the last decade. The site has also produced extensive special reports on the U.S. prison system and the state of the planet’s coral reefs.
In addition to stories from the print magazine, MotherJones.com offers original online content five days a week, including reported stories and the MoJo Blog.
[edit] Mother Jones Radio
Launched on June 19, 2005, Mother Jones Radio is heard on Air America Radio Sundays at 1:00 p.m. EST. The one-hour show is hosted by Angie Coiro and features interviews and commentaries inspired by stories from Mother Jones.
