Monika Bauerlein

Editor in Chief

Since taking the helm at Mother Jones in 2006, Monika and her co-editor, Clara Jeffery, have won two National Magazine Awards, launched a nine-person Washington bureau, relaunched the website, given birth, and forgotten what it’s like to sleep.

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Monika Bauerlein is co-editor of Mother Jones, where, together with Clara Jeffery, she spearheaded an era of editorial growth and innovation, marked by two National Magazine Awards for general excellence, the addition of a seven-person Washington Bureau, and an overhaul of the organization’s digital strategy that tripled MotherJones.com's traffic. Previously she was Mother Jones' investigative editor, focusing on long-form projects marrying in-depth reportage, document sleuthing, and narrative appeal. She has also worked as an alternative-weekly editor (at Minneapolis/St. Paul’s City Pages), a correspondent for US and European publications in Washington, D.C. and at the United Nations, an AP stringer, corporate trainer, translator, sausage slinger and fishing-line packager. She lives in Oakland.

Somali Pirates: Another Thing To Thank George W. Bush For?

—By Monika Bauerlein

| Tue Apr. 14, 2009 10:51 PM PDT

Now that Somalia's finally gotten our attention, it's worth rereading a piece David Case filed for MoJo in late 2007, after (unlike most of the people who now claim expertise on the subject) actually spending time in the region. At the time, Case was one of the few reporters noting the US role in supporting the Ethiopian invasion, which helped turn a failed state into a full-on war zone:

Somalia may barely register with the American media, but the [post-invasion] bloodshed is a major story on Al Jazeera. Across the Middle East, Somalia is viewed as another hostile front in Bush's war against Islam, says Colin Thomas-Jensen of the Washington-based Enough Project. "In the minds of Muslims, this is the third time the U.S. has supported the toppling of an Islamic government with no political plan for the aftermath, leaving behind chaos."

In other words: Pirates are the least of our problems. Read the whole thing.

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Come see Rachel Maddow (in SF)--ticket giveaway

—By Monika Bauerlein

| Wed Mar. 25, 2009 2:51 PM PDT

Genius host Rachel Maddow is graciously doing a fundraiser for Mother Jones in San Francisco this Saturday; we thought that as a thank you to all of MoJoBlog readerdom, we'd give away a pair of tickets to one of you. Let us know in the comments if you're interested--we'll pick one commenter at random by Thursday night. Make sure to register so we have a way to contact you. See you there!

UPDATE: And the winner is... commenter No. 2, reyonthehill! We'll email you about how to get a hold of your tickets. (I'm trying to figure out how to embed a picture of the random.org result, but can't seem to get it to work. Sorry!)

We Rock! Three "Magazine Oscar" Nominations for MoJo

—By Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery

| Wed Mar. 18, 2009 3:19 PM PDT

Who-hoo! Mother Jones has just been nominated for three National Magazine Awards. The NMAs are often described as the magazine world's Academy Awards (without the awful musical medleys). Picking up three Ellie nods is a real honor, and all the more so since we won a General Excellence Award last year. This time, we've been nominated in the General Excellence categories for both print and online (our print submission consisted of three special issues on torture, energy, and the new "ECOnomy"). We're also up in the Public Interest category. As always, we're pitted against a diverse group of formidable competitors—Foreign Policy, Vanity Fair, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, and Paste, to name a few. We're practicing balancing Ellie statues on our noses, just in case. But it's not too soon to thank you, the key ingredient in our reader-supported journalism, for keeping us on our toes and pushing us to keep going. Winners will be announced April 30—we'll keep you updated. The official press release is after the jump.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Editors' Note: March/April 2009

Want to fix the country? Fix food.

—By Clara Jeffery and Monika Bauerlein

| March/April 2009

UPDATE: Join us for an expert-led reader forum April 13-17 on MotherJones.com around the question: Is organic and local so 2008?

as confirmation hearings go, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's was a breeze. He wasn't asked to explain his cheerleading for ethanol (granted, Iowa governors hardly have a choice) or genetically engineered food; the closest the senators came to a tough question was on whether ag subsidies would be doled out to just Midwestern commodities, or whether Southern and California farmers could get in on the action.

In a moment that affirmed our appreciation for the upper chamber's special brand of dignified discourse, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) soliloquized on farms that don't conform to the corporate model: "That small family farmer is a retired airline pilot and sits on his porch on a glider reading Gentleman's Quarterly—he used to read the Wall Street Journal, but that got pretty drab—and his wife works as a stockbroker downtown. And he has 40 acres, and he has a pond, and he has an orchard, and he grows organic apples. Sometimes there is a little more protein in those apples than people bargain for, and he's very happy to have that."

[Read the full article]

What Do Men Want (To Read)?

—By Monika Bauerlein

| Wed Feb. 18, 2009 11:22 PM PST

Perusing her Esquire newsletter earlier this month, former MoJo associate editor Kathryn Olney was intrigued not just by "The Secret World of Lingerie Explained", but also by the reprise of "75 Books Every Man Should Read," first published last September but still going strong on the Esquire site. She sends this riff:

Number 20 is "The Postman Always Rings Twice," because it "teaches men about women." So that's what makes Cain's book great, the message that all women are femmes fatales. Silly me, I thought it was just groundbreaking noir fiction.

Guys, if you’re so curious about women, how come your list includes just one female author, Flannery O'Connor? If you read more about what some great women of letters have on their mind, you wouldn't just be drooling over "women we love" from afar. Hey, even slippery old Chris Hitchens, who doesn’t think women are funny, recommends that everyone read Jane Austen… because “she’s so hilarious about other women” in Northanger Abbey.

There is a bit of a pattern here. Your October list of the 75 most influential people has a grand total of seven women. And that 70 greatest sentences compilation last year? That has four wee sentences penned by females. People – including us girls-- love these guilty-pleasure lists. But you have to get back to your storied Dubious Distinction roots. Roll up those white shirtsleeves! Go back to your cages and flip through some old issues of Esquire. You gave Gloria Steinem her start; Dorothy Parker and Nora Ephron both used to write columns for you. Joan Didion, Martha Gellhorn, Susan Orlean and Simone De Beauvoir all grace your back issues. Isak Dinesen, Rebecca West, M.F.K. Fisher, Susan Brownmiller, Susan Sontag, Joyce Carol Oates, and Grace Paley made appearances too.

Come to think of it, I guess old habits die hard. Esquire historian Carol Polsgrove reminds me that "when Harold Hayes put together his fat anthology of 60's Esquire pieces, Smiling Through the Apocalypse, only three women made it into the list of 59 entries."

Even if you aren't interested in the classics (Toni Morrison? Edith Wharton? Eudora Welty? Virginia Woolf? Zora Neale Hurston?) surely "today's man" can stand to crack open a book by a few of Esquire's very own more, um, muscular writers like Orlean and Didion. Or maybe they'll at least read Ayn Rand, even if we won't.

MJ readers, help these poor, overworked editors out: post your own favorite writers below. Write pithy little comments akin to their own 75 quips (extra points for tasteful sexual references). I'll start: Susan Orlean: …Because, with a poet's grace and an angel's face, she paved the way for a whole generation of nonfiction literary journalists.”