Mother Jones, 731 Market Street, Suite 600, San Francisco CA 94103.
Subs: $24/year (6 issues), Tel: 800-438-6656.
Founded in 1976, the glossy mass-circulation magazine Mother Jones
(named after legendary 19th-century U.S. labor agitator Mary Harris
"Mother" Jones) has had a rather amazing history. Despite the nation's
subsequent hard swerve to the right, MJ continues to serve up investigative
reporting and broadly "alternative" features to 200,000 readers. To its
left-wing detractors, this success has been achieved at the cost of an
unacceptable yuppification, a concentration on "soft" environmental and
other issues not inconsistent with life on a trust fund. This is the line
taken by the irrepressible Michael Moore, fired after a brief turn as an
MJ editor, who takes a passing shot at the magazine and its San Francisco
ambience in his anti-General Motors documentary "Roger and Me." Still,
credit where credit is due. Amid its ads for Birkenstock sandals and
upscale erotica, MJ keeps printing solid investigative reporting -- much
of it funded by the magazine's own nonprofit investigative fund. See, for
example, Scott Armstrong's genuine scoop (Nov.-Dec. 1991) on the secret
$200 billion military infrastructure the U.S. built for the Saudis before
the Gulf War.
-- Steve Badrich
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