Jaeah Lee

Jaeah Lee

Associate Interactive Producer

When Jaeah isn't making mockups, researching, or blogging for Mother Jones, she's usually reading about foreign policy, climate change, or new dinner recipes. A lover of mass transit, she can pretty much navigate the New York City subway blindfolded.

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Prior to joining Mother Jones, Jaeah worked as a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, focusing on China. Her writings have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, Global Post, Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, and Movements.org.

Map: How Much Do Your Local Teachers Earn?

Are they scraping by or making bank? Some data behind the education debate.

—By , , and

| Fri Sep. 14, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

The Chicago teacher strike has resurrected the question at the center of much edupontificating: Are American teachers underpaid or overpaid?

For some perspective, we've compiled data on the average wages of elementary-school, middle-school, and high school teachers in more than 300 metropolitan areas. As you'll see, most teachers make more than $45,320, the average yearly wage for all occupations tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yet the range of what they earn varies widely: Elementary-school teachers in Jefferson City, Missouri, earn an average of $37,090; their colleagues in Long Island, New York, earn an average of $90,560.

Click on a city on the map below for more information on teachers' average wages within its greater metropolitan area. Note: Earnings do not include benefits.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics 2011 wage estimates

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GOP Platform Flashback: "Government Must Have a Heart"

—By and

| Fri Sep. 7, 2012 3:00 AM PDT
Andrew Shurtleff/ZUMAPress & davelawrence8/Flickr

Last week, President Obama accused the GOP of time-warping back to the days of "black and white TV." True, the party's policies, especially on women and civil rights, are straight out of the 50s (if not the Middle Ages). But Obama's jab wasn't quite fair to Republicans of the Leave it To Beaver era, whose 1956 platform seems downright progressive when compared with some of the retrograde planks laid out in the 2012 version. The year President Dwight Eisenhower ran for a second term against Adlai Stevenson, the platform sung the praises of unions, called for government to have a "heart as well as a head," and backed the doomed Equal Rights Amendment. Oh, and the 1956 Dems were a lot more agro on labor, and positively chest-thumping when it came to defense. Scroll down to check out how the parties' positions have shifted over the past 50-plus years.

Wikipedia & Library of Congress

 

Image credits: donkey: The Noun Project; elephant: Adrijan Karavdic, from The Noun Project.

 

How Our Digital Newsroom Uses Google’s Chart Tools

—By

| Fri Aug. 31, 2012 8:15 AM PDT

Here at Mother Jones, our reporters, editors, and army of fact-checkers hoard more troves of chart-tastic data than our 2.5-person interactive team can keep up with. We love quality charts and take great pride in those we've produced before—our visualizations of income inequality from March 2011 are still in our all-time biggest traffic items. But our booming daily content calls for a charting method that allows for faster, easier collaboration across the newsroom, and our go-to solutions—Illustrator and Excel—don't always cut it.

So in June, our interactive editor Tasneem Raja asked me to dig into Google's Chart Tools API. Two nice things about this approach: first, our reporters and editors already know and love Google Doc's collaborative editing features. And second, since Chart Tools can hook into a Google spreadsheet, a reporter can easily update a chart visualization themselves by simply changing the data in the underlying spreadsheet. The API also comes with a suite of configuration options that allows you to customize your chart's font, colors, and dimensions to better match your existing site styles (to an extent—more on that later).

Here's how we got it working for us.

After some preliminary Googling, I found a Google bar chart example that used the Fusion Table API, and, even better, included some sample code. As you can see below, the chart mostly runs on JavaScript, pulling data from a Fusion Table and applying some basic queries and layout.

<html> <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">

    <title>Fusion Tables API Example: Google Chart Tools Bar Chart</title>

    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      google.load('visualization', '1', { packages: ['corechart'] });

      function drawVisualization() {
        google.visualization.drawChart({
          containerId: 'visualization',
          dataSourceUrl: 'http://www.google.com/fusiontables/gvizdata?tq=',
          query: 'SELECT Year, Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Greece FROM 18k8XNgsc5ktLP2EHMCpoKIwymsVlzVV-xVuceA',
          chartType: 'BarChart',
          options: {
            title: 'Yearly Coffee Consumption by Country',
            vAxis: {
              title: 'Year'
            },
            hAxis: {
              title: 'Cups'
            }
          }
        });
      }

      google.setOnLoadCallback(drawVisualization);
    </script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="visualization"></div>
  </body> </html>

[Read more in the Mixed Media blog]

A History of Mitt Romney in 30 Objects

From swag to scissors to Seamus, a virtual tour of our GOP nominee's defining moments.

—By , , and

| Mon Aug. 27, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney has expressed his love for America, mangoes, papayas, pie, water, laughing, good pretzels, American cars, the existence of wind, legal immigration, all of the Constitutional amendments, ice skating, and trees of a certain height. But if you're looking to understand where the GOP presidential candidate is coming from, it's best to examine a different set of objects. As Romney prepares to accept his party's nomination in Tampa, here's our virtual tour of his defining moments as told through the objects, both literal and metaphorical, that he's encountered on his journey.

[Read the full article]

Stellar Crime Reporting Doesn't Come for Free

—By

| Mon Aug. 20, 2012 3:00 AM PDT
This photo gallery shows victims from Homicide Watch DC's database.

Two years ago, Laura Amico and her husband Chris created Homicide Watch DC, a website that reports on every homicide in the nation's capital that the two can track down. Visitors can easily look up any recent homicide victim or suspect in the DC metro area, locate incidents on a Google Map, track cases through RSS feeds, and read public records associated to each case. The site gets 330,000 pageviews a month, and its commenting system has been particularly valuable for family and friends of homicide victims looking to ask questions, offer additional information, or simply express their grief.

Homicide Watch's data-driven approach, combined with Laura's more traditional style of reporting—she spends most days jotting notes inside court rooms or on the phone with victim relatives—has resulted in a deep historical archive and factchecking tool. Late last December, when the DC Metro Police Department held a press conference to announce a 94 percent homicide closure rate in 2011, Laura thought that number sounded implausibly high. Chris checked their database and found that Homicide Watch records showed 61 arrests made out of 108 incidents in 2011, falling short of MPD's closure claim. Laura made a few phone calls and determined that the disparity was due to the police department including arrests made prior to 2011* in their count (a practice also used by the FBI).

[Read more in the Mixed Media blog]

CHARTS: World's GMO Crop Fields Could Cover the US 1.5 Times Over
Tue Feb. 26, 2013 4:06 AM PST

China's "Ultimate Goal Is a Huge Fracking Industry"
Tue Nov. 27, 2012 4:08 AM PST

Lines of 150 People and 90 Minute Waits in Akron, Ohio
Tue Nov. 6, 2012 5:55 PM PST

GOP Platform Flashback: "Government Must Have a Heart"
Fri Sep. 7, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

How Our Digital Newsroom Uses Google’s Chart Tools
Fri Aug. 31, 2012 8:15 AM PDT

Stellar Crime Reporting Doesn't Come for Free
Mon Aug. 20, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

US Female Olympians Have Won More Medal Points Than All but Four Countries
Sun Aug. 12, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

New Bill Would Cut $113 Billion in Fossil Fuel Subsidies
Fri May. 11, 2012 12:30 AM PDT

M83 Takes Synthpop Back to the Future
Mon May. 7, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Justice Takes Electronica Mainstream
Mon Apr. 23, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Charts: Dirty Energy's Election Ad Spending Spree
Wed Apr. 18, 2012 10:50 AM PDT

Will Pennsylvania Reverse its Gag Order on Fracking Chemicals?
Mon Apr. 16, 2012 1:56 PM PDT

Calculator: How Much Does Using Coal Really Cost?
Mon Apr. 2, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

What Your Shampoo Bottle Isn't Telling You
Fri Mar. 9, 2012 3:04 PM PST

Barnes & Noble, National Geographic's Illegal Logging Ties
Fri Mar. 2, 2012 4:00 AM PST

It's Polar Bear Day. How Much Do You Care?
Mon Feb. 27, 2012 11:34 AM PST

Which Major Corporations Are Backing a Climate-Denier Think Tank?
Sat Feb. 18, 2012 4:00 AM PST

EPA to Cruise and Cargo Ships: No More Dumping on California's Coasts
Thu Feb. 9, 2012 1:13 PM PST

A Zagat-Style Guide for Ethical Diners
Mon Dec. 5, 2011 3:30 AM PST

From Rock Musician to Anti-Slavery Activist
Mon Nov. 21, 2011 4:00 AM PST

Which Household Cleaners Contain Toxins?
Thu Nov. 17, 2011 10:19 AM PST

EPA Could Save 35,700 Lives by Limiting Soot, but Won't
Thu Nov. 17, 2011 5:15 AM PST

The EPA Isn't Protecting You From the Worst Polluters
Tue Nov. 8, 2011 10:30 AM PST

Energy Department: World CO2 Emissions Rising Faster Than Ever
Fri Nov. 4, 2011 12:54 PM PDT

Slave-Labor Candy, Union-Busting Costumes, and Lead-Laden Fake Bling: Happy Halloween!
Mon Oct. 31, 2011 2:30 AM PDT

BPA Makes Little Girls Anxious and Depressed
Tue Oct. 25, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

Report: Countries Catch Way More Bluefin Tuna Than They're Supposed To
Fri Oct. 21, 2011 1:48 PM PDT

Boehner's Funding From Coal up 2,400 Percent
Thu Sep. 15, 2011 3:15 AM PDT

The Return of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Mon Aug. 15, 2011 3:30 AM PDT

Why Bottled Water Companies Target Blacks and Latinos
Mon Aug. 15, 2011 2:30 AM PDT

Outside Lands' Gourmet Ghetto
Sat Aug. 13, 2011 2:25 PM PDT

What It'll Take to Make Seattle Carbon Neutral
Thu Aug. 11, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

New Report: CO2 Emissions Cost Way More Than You Think
Wed Aug. 3, 2011 5:04 PM PDT

Langhorne Slim Hits the Alt-Country Road
Fri Jul. 22, 2011 6:30 PM PDT

How I (Almost) Became an Air Guitar Fan
Mon Jul. 4, 2011 3:30 AM PDT

RJD2's Four-Handed Vinyl Orchestra
Mon Jun. 20, 2011 3:50 AM PDT

Why Bolivia Still Won't Sign a Global Climate Agreement
Wed Jun. 8, 2011 10:31 AM PDT

Sleigh Bells' Postmodern Punk
Mon Jun. 6, 2011 4:30 AM PDT

How Bad Is Climate Change for Your Lungs?
Fri Jun. 3, 2011 2:16 PM PDT

Asobi Seksu: Music for Space Travel?
Mon May. 30, 2011 4:20 AM PDT

NOAA's Gamble on the Bluefin Tuna
Fri May. 27, 2011 4:37 PM PDT

Yelle's Safari Disco Universe
Mon May. 23, 2011 3:36 AM PDT

Forget Earthquakes: Fires Are the Biggest Threat to US Nuclear Plants
Wed May. 11, 2011 1:54 PM PDT

What We Didn't Know About Internet Controls
Thu Apr. 21, 2011 2:20 PM PDT

BP to Oil Spill Victims: Get Off My Stoop!
Fri Apr. 15, 2011 12:50 PM PDT

The #18DaysInEgypt Media Revolution
Fri Apr. 15, 2011 12:01 AM PDT

5 Ways to Sip a Cocktail and Save the World
Thu Apr. 14, 2011 11:50 AM PDT

The EPA's Moment of Truth
Wed Apr. 6, 2011 2:24 PM PDT

Senators' "Sneak-Attack" on the EPA
Wed Mar. 16, 2011 12:00 PM PDT

In Arctic, Warmer Climate Means More "Beavers Defecating" And Disease
Fri Mar. 4, 2011 5:00 AM PST

Charts: How Foreign Firms Flood America With Guns—and Get Rich Doing It

We import millions of firearms from nations with far stricter gun control laws than the United States.

Thu Apr. 4, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

Anti-Choice March Madness: The Worst State for Women

Which state will dominate in this tournament of lady-haters?

Thu Mar. 21, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

Charts: This Is What Happens When You Defund Planned Parenthood

Dozens of clinics have shut down in Texas, leaving nearly 200,000 women in search of affordable health care.

Thu Mar. 14, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

More Than Half of Mass Shooters Used Assault Weapons and High-Capacity Magazines

Congress considers banning weapons that have caused carnage in shopping malls, schools, and city streets.

Wed Feb. 27, 2013 4:01 AM PST

Chinese Cyberwarfare, Explained

So…just how screwed are we?

Thu Feb. 21, 2013 4:01 AM PST

MAP: Does Your State Let You Carry a Gun on Campus?

Five states now do, and seven others may soon follow—including Texas, where a shooting just shook up a community college.

Wed Jan. 23, 2013 6:56 AM PST

Charts: Suicide, PTSD and the Psychological Toll on America's Vets

14 staggering stats about the invisible wounds of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thu Jan. 17, 2013 4:11 AM PST

151 Victims of Mass Shootings in 2012: Here Are Their Stories

Bearing witness to the worst year of gun rampages in modern US history.

Fri Dec. 21, 2012 2:16 AM PST

Watch: The Year of Mass Shootings

2012 was the bloodiest yet. Here's a video collection of our reports on gun atrocities.

Fri Dec. 14, 2012 9:18 PM PST

Should I Buy a Fake Christmas Tree or a Real One?

How I tried—and failed—to buy the "greenest" tree possible.

Wed Dec. 12, 2012 4:03 AM PST

Does Costco Destroy Baby Manatees? MoJo's Eco-Doom Headline Generator

When climate change takes over, this little robot will carry on if we cannot.

Mon Dec. 10, 2012 4:03 AM PST

Is Your Pension Fund Taking Land Away From African Farmers?

A new report finds that some of the biggest funds are involved in deals that could shortchange subsistence farmers in the developing world.

Wed Dec. 5, 2012 4:03 AM PST

Will China's New Policy Silence Future Protesters?

A new environmental regulation could make it easier for authorities to suppress protesters before they hit the streets.

Fri Nov. 16, 2012 4:13 AM PST

Now That's What I Call Gerrymandering!

Americans didn't intend to elect a Republican majority to the House of Representatives. Thanks to GOP-engineered redistricting, they did.

Wed Nov. 14, 2012 4:03 AM PST

Charts: Ladyparts Strike Back

Check out all the record-breaking wins by the women of our next Congress.

Fri Nov. 9, 2012 4:03 AM PST

Charts: The Voter Guide for Your Ladyparts

Eleven reasons why every woman should vote on Tuesday.

Fri Nov. 2, 2012 3:08 AM PDT

Maps: Solitary Confinement, State by State

An exclusive review of how state prisons use isolation to discipline inmates and weed out gang members.

November/December 2012 Issue

Flowchart: Are You a Taker or a Maker?

Tonight, when Joe Biden and Paul Ryan face off, you better know whether you're a "taker" or a "maker."

Thu Oct. 11, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

MAP: Which States Hunt Wolves?

Hunting of Canis lupus is making a major comeback.

Mon Oct. 1, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Map: A Wave of Teacher Strikes in Illinois

Following Chicago's big teacher strike, several Chicagoland districts are facing new protests. And: see strikes near you over the last 40 years.

Thu Sep. 20, 2012 12:28 PM PDT

Charts: You Might Be the 47 Percent If…

…you don't owe federal income taxes because you're a working mom, a soldier, a millionaire, or a corporation.

Tue Sep. 18, 2012 3:47 PM PDT

Voter Suppression: Coming to a State Near You?

If you're planning on voting in November, here's a few things you should know.

Mon Sep. 17, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Map: How Much Do Your Local Teachers Earn?

Are they scraping by or making bank? Some data behind the education debate.

Fri Sep. 14, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Scissors, Seamus, and Wedding Cake: A History of Mitt Romney in 30 Objects

A virtual tour of our GOP nominee's defining moments.

Mon Aug. 27, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Charts: UFO Sightings Are More Common Than Voter Fraud

As Pennsylvania's new ID law goes on trial, some eye-popping stats about a problem no one can prove exists.

July/August 2012 Issue

Digital Voting Machines: Still FUBAR??

Twelve years after Bush v. Gore, bad technology could still wipe out your vote.

July/August 2012 Issue

Charts: Women's Athletics, 40 Years After Title IX

How the landmark gender-equity law has—and hasn't—evened the playing field.

Fri Jun. 22, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Want to Ditch Citizens United? A DIY Guide

Pick your own path to an America without super-PACs.

Mon May. 21, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

How Walmart Conquered the World

Walmart's journey from small-town five-and-dime to mother of all megastores.

March/April 2012 Issue

Interactive Explainer: How the GOP Stealth Money Machine Works

A hands-on look at how millions of dollars mysteriously end up in the pockets of Republican candidates around the country.

Tue Jan. 17, 2012 4:00 AM PST

Trading Faces: Portlandia's Fred Armisen

A comic sketch of the quick-drumming, hipster-lampooning, laugh-inducing SNL master impersonator.

Wed Jan. 4, 2012 4:00 AM PST

Forget the US News College Rankings. Enroll Here and Actually Get a Job.

Here are nine top-notch degree programs in fields that are both cool and hiring like mad.

Thu Sep. 15, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

Burning Man Spotlight: Why Naked Women Rule

An artist's quest to empower women using 9,000 pounds of steel.

Thu Sep. 1, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

Girl Talk: The Making of a Mashup Star

How Gregg Gillis, armed only with a laptop, came to rule the dance party.

Mon Apr. 25, 2011 4:09 AM PDT

Climategate: Anatomy of a Scandal

How a hacker, some oil-funded pundits, and a credulous press undermined decades of climate research.

Thu Apr. 21, 2011 3:00 AM PDT