Mother Jones (magazine)

Mother Jones

Mother Jones magazine March April 2014 cover
Editor-in-Chief	Clara Jeffery
Categories	Politics
Frequency	Bimonthly
Total circulation (2012)	203,251
First issue	February 1976
Company	Foundation For National Progress
Country	United States
Based in	San Francisco
Language	English
Website	www.motherjones.com
ISSN	0362-8841

Mother Jones (abbreviated MoJo) is a politically progressive American magazine that does independent and investigative reporting on politics, the environment, human rights, and culture. Clara Jeffery serves as editor. Steve Katz has been publisher since 2010. Monika Bauerlein has been CEO since 2015.

The magazine was named after Mary Harris Jones, known as Mother Jones, an Irish-American trade union activist and ardent opponent of child labor.

Mother Jones is published by the Foundation for National Progress (FNP), a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. Mother Jones and the FNP are based in San Francisco, with other offices in Washington, D.C., and New York.

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, Paul Jacobs, Richard Parker, Deborah Johnson, Jeffrey Bruce Klein, Mark Dowie, Amanda Spake, Zina Klapper, and Deirdre English. According to Hochschild, Parker, "who worked as both editor and publisher, saw to it that Mother Jones took the best of what could be learned from the world of commercial publishing."

Michael Moore, 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 $2 million for wrongful termination, but settled with the magazine’s insurance company for $58,000—only $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. For example, a Paul Berman article about Nicaragua—commissioned by English—was slightly critical of the Sandinistas, whom Mother Jones typically supported. Moore did not want to print it, but the magazine had made a commitment to Berman. The Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn believed the disagreement over the Berman article was the sole reason for Moore's firing, but Hochschild and others at the magazine denied this.