How Mother Jones’ early editors reshaped political journalism

From 1979’s newsroom walk-throughs and mechanical-pencil editing to the magazine’s landmark corporate-censorship reporting and global accountability push, the story of Mother Jones’ early years is also a story about who gets to speak in American politics—and w

In 1979, the workday felt physical—pages passed hand to hand, marked up with colored pens and mechanical pencils, and conversations happening face to face because there was no texting or email to shortcut the human parts of reporting.

When she came on board as an editor in 1979. the magazine had just moved into the loft space Rolling Stone vacated when it fled to New York. The reason, she says, was tied to the fear of “the Big One” held by Jann Wenner’s then-spouse. In that cramped. shared office. Mother Jones became a small band of brothers and sisters working long hours for slim pay. The editing process wasn’t abstract. Someone walked the copy from desk to desk while the magazine-making unfolded in physical space.

Accuracy wasn’t just a professional virtue—it was survival. Pages went to a fact-checking department she describes as a severe taskmaster. and next to visionary art director Louise Kollenbaum. whose stated goal was to give readers “access to the thinking.” She paired long. serious articles with color illustrations. photos. pull quotes. sidebars. and cartoons.

The magazine itself had been founded in 1976. but she says its identity was decidedly post-’60s even as critics—and readers—remembered it as a ’60s relic. She traces how resentment against the college-based youth movement. hippies. and antiwar protests grew among a “silent majority. ” and how Black. Latino. and other uprisings were met with violent suppression in crackdowns led by the FBI. CIA. and local police departments. By 1969. Richard Nixon was swept into office on that wave of conservative resentment—a pattern she says the country later repeated under Nixon. Reagan. and Trump.

The turning point, in her telling, came when Nixon was unseated in 1974. It wasn’t Democrats or the left that shifted the political weather first. It was journalism—Watergate revelations that made investigative reporters national heroes and demonstrated that even a president could be ousted when malfeasance was exposed.

By the time she was named editor-in-chief in 1980, she says her tenure coincided with a backlash era. But it also coincided with continuing social change, something some described as “the long ’60s,” or the persistence of resistance. The backlash never fully succeeded.

As the baby boomers emerged from their twenties. she says many became progressive professionals: social entrepreneurs. nonprofit leaders. affordable housing developers. alternative energy pioneers. Scholars were reshaping schools and universities with more inclusive curricula. Many of them expected the emergence of a new voting majority. a left-populist “rainbow coalition” in Jesse Jackson’s 1984 phrase—an ancestor. she adds. to the “purple America” Barack Obama would proclaim in his 2008 campaign—one that would incorporate those she says had been excluded from the American Dream: women. racial and ethnic communities. the working class. and the poor. She calls it logical, possible, and still within reach.

Those early years, she says, were marked by reporting that forced uncomfortable truths into the open. One of the stories her colleagues still remembered most—picked out by Mark Dowie. Mother Jones’ chief of investigative reporting—was a special issue from 1979 with a cover reading “The Corporate Crime of the Century.” That issue. produced in partnership with the Center for Investigative Reporting. focused on the practice of exporting products banned in the United States to other countries.

The consequences described in that reporting were not theoretical. Hundreds of Iraqis had died from grain coated with a fungicide banned in the United States. Pajamas treated with Tris—described as a carcinogenic fire retardant that set off panic among U.S. parents—were shipped overseas. So were pacifiers and teething rings linked to choking deaths. The reporting also detailed how both Depo-Provera and the Dalkon Shield—dangerous contraceptives that could not be sold in the U.S.—were being sent abroad in U.S.-sponsored population programs.

The work won a National Magazine Award and later became a book called Circle of Poison by CIR reporters Mark Schapiro and David Weir. Carter signed an executive order banning the practice. Reagan later rescinded that order. but legislation was eventually put in place to at least inform other countries whether products for export had been banned in the U.S.

For Adam Hochschild. another defining memory came in 1979. during an evening in Moscow in the smoke- and vodka-infused apartment of Andrei Sakharov. Hochschild was interviewing Sakharov for Mother Jones. She quotes Hochschild telling her. “I felt immensely humbled to see this man…put his immense prestige in support of dissidents under threat from the Kremlin. ” and adding. “I felt in the presence of people willing to sacrifice everything for their ideals.” Less than two years later. Sakharov and his wife. Yelena Bonner. were sentenced to internal exile for opposing the USSR’s war in Afghanistan.

Her account also returns again and again to the question of who could speak in political conversation. She writes that at the time there was no other woman editing a national “thought leader” magazine—a term of art in their trade—and that bylines for women were scarce. Men and women mostly read different magazines. and feminist writing was generally aimed at women. as in Ms. founded just a few years before Mother Jones.

She describes a profound cleavage among progressives: feminists were expanding their understanding of patriarchy and gender discrimination. but many men were “often barely aware.” Bringing women’s voices into what she calls male-dominated political conversations—and showing that feminism was good for men too—was a big step.

She also lists how the newsroom made that step real: assigning stories by the late and much-missed Barbara Ehrenreich. along with Katha Pollitt. Doris Lessing. Vivian Gornick. and others. Kollenbaum brought in countless women as artists. cartoonists. and photographers. including Sue Coe. Roz Chast. and Susan Meiselas. often spotlighting their work early in what would become significant careers.

Fiction, she says, was another route to fresh voices, since art can move ahead of politics. Alice Walker wrote a complex meditation on marriage and abortion, and included an excerpt from The Color Purple. She says that excerpt centered Black feminist issues with writing she notes would later be called intersectional. Maxine Hong Kingston wrote “The Brother in Vietnam,” about Chinese American men drafted into an anti-Asian war. Bharati Mukherjee wrote “Angela,” tracing the journey of a girl adopted from Bangladesh. Grace Paley wrote on marriage and her neighborhood association. Rudolfo Anaya. a founder of Chicano literature. shared an excerpt from Bless Me. Ultima. which later won the Premio Quinto Sol award.

Kollenbaum’s own Native American ancestry appears again in how the magazine framed American politics. She put Russell Means—leader of the American Indian Movement—on the cover of the issue featuring his essay on the ravages of “European mentality” on the Earth. Other writers covered racial discrimination: Reggie Major and Cecil Brown and Manning Marable. Thulani Davis wrote about Black mayors. Roger Wilkins wrote on Jesse Jackson. Margaret Atwood wrote about anti-American feeling in Canada. Alan Bérubé explored the origins of gay liberation in WWII. Arlie Russell Hochschild. in a piece about flight attendants. introduced the term “emotional labor” and drew attention to the habit of men telling women to smile more.

Editors wrote too. Amanda Spake delved into a brutal attack on a young female hitchhiker and the “mythic rage” particular to men that led to the crime. Doug Foster, later editor-in-chief, investigated the dumping of radioactive waste at sea. Jeffrey Klein, also later editor-in-chief, offered a ferocious interrogation of 60 Minutes legend Mike Wallace. Klein’s account included that Wallace had turned down his requests for an interview for months. After learning Wallace was to fly to New York from Los Angeles on a particular day. Klein booked the seat next to him and grilled him midair.

Even the magazine’s oddities carried the signal that reporting could reach far beyond a desk. Rick Clogher. a great copy editor. disappeared for a spell and came back with a story about having infiltrated the Bohemian Grove. a retreat for rich and powerful men that has been the subject of countless conspiracy theories since. David Talbot had headlines she says they didn’t yet call viral—“My Mother’s Name is Afton Blake. My Father’s Number 28. Sperm-Banking in America”—and later went on to found the first major digital magazine, Salon.

The work stretched beyond U.S. borders and into conflict zones. Orville Schell traveled to China, where he encountered a nascent underground punk culture. Bill Finnegan wrote about “unlearning apartheid” as a teacher in South Africa. During blood-soaked years when the U.S. sponsored Central America’s repressive armies, Mother Jones focused there intensely. In a 1981 special package. “The White Hand of Terror in El Salvador. ” it showed grisly photos. including children murdered by U.S.-trained forces. images she says the rest of the press shied away from. In 1985, she went to Nicaragua, interviewed President Daniel Ortega, and raised doubts about the sustainability of Sandinista ideals.

When she asked a colleague what the magazine might have missed—whether it overlooked the “shafting of the working class”—she says the answer was decidedly no. They ran pieces by writers like Ron Chernow. later writing the Alexander Hamilton biography on which Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical is based. extolling progressive unionism and investigating the “New Pinkertons.” Studs Terkel contributed the lament of a logger over his life and the life of the forest. Barbara Garson wrote about the fresh hell of data-entry jobs in “The Electronic Sweatshop” in 1981.

She does acknowledge the audience problem in a way that makes her later hope feel earned. Their readers. she writes. were largely college educated and middle class—typical for long-form magazines—even as right-wing radio and TV made inroads with working-class audiences. That’s why she’s hopeful about today’s Mother Jones. reaching audiences beyond print through YouTube. social media. and podcast platforms. featuring personalities built to connect with a wide range of communities.

Looking back, she says, she mostly remembers the people—the co-workers who made the work happen. She calls them good-looking, caring, witty, and whip smart, and offers her message to them: those were the days.

For today’s MoJo audience, her message is that the magazine’s experience offers hope now. She argues that in the Reagan era. the movements we championed and the accountability they demanded were hit with brutal backlash. But she insists the journalism persevered in exposing and opposing—work she says it continues to do forcefully today. The audience for that work, she writes, has only grown in size and diversity. Now. MoJo stands on a firmer foundation than ever. and she says the magazine knows—“in our hearts”—that it’s exactly when accountability and justice are most under attack that independent. reader-supported journalism will rise to meet the challenge.

For those looking deeper. she directs readers to a set of 50th anniversary features: The Stunning Photojournalism That Made Mother Jones. The Cover Stories That Put Mother Jones on the Map. and Exploding Cars. Office Monkeys. Watergate: The Origins of Mother Jones. She also points to the More to the Story episode “Exploding Pintos. Imploding Politics: Celebrating 50 Years of Fearless Journalism. ” and to MoJo Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery and co-founder Adam Hochschild’s conversation on KQED’s Forum.

Mother Jones investigative journalism Watergate corporate exports Carter executive order Reagan rescind Tris fire retardant Depo-Provera Dalkon Shield women in media Louise Kollenbaum Jesse Jackson rainbow coalition