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.

Mother Jones Goes Open Source

We've relaunched. Here's why.

—By Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery

| Tue Feb. 10, 2009 6:04 PM PST

Welcome to the new Mother Jones. With any luck, you won't have much more of a reaction at this point than "Oh, that's nice." You, dear user, are blissfully oblivious to the hand-wringing, bitch-slapping, hair-pulling, and general angst that goes into a redesign. But perhaps you'll find it mildly amusing to learn why we decided to do what we did—and how you might get a better user experience out of it.

Why did we relaunch? The first answer is obvious—the look and feel of the site had worn out its welcome. We were sick of it, and we're pretty sure you were, too. At a deeper level, its constraints didn't match the extra reporting and blogging firepower we've built up over the past two years as we've dramatically expanded our in-house investigative team, including an eight-person Washington bureau. What you're looking at now is cleaner, less cluttered, and, we hope, far more inviting—a much better vehicle for the volume of fresh content we publish every day. It also has a more efficient software back end, which means that people here can spend more time on journalism and less on clunky code.

We also built it open source—in Drupal, specifically—which means that the basic code that runs Mother Jones is available to anyone, anywhere; we'll also put some of our custom work back into the public domain so other people can use it to build their own projects. That's a cool thing, and we think Mary Harris Jones would have liked it. (And if any of you Drupal coders wanna build an app for MoJo, that'd be beyond awesome.)

[Read the full article]

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Why the Mess Obama Inherits Might Be His Greatest Opportunity

As long as we're sticking our kids with the bailout tab, let's leave them some souvenirs.

—By Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery

| January/February 2009 Issue

we'd meant to start this column with a few choice expletives about Goldman Sachs and its gall in setting aside nearly $6.9 billion for year-end bonuses even after getting a $10 billion bailout check from the federal government. But someone at Goldman must have finally stuck his finger in the wind, because just before we went to press, the firm announced that its top seven executives would have to settle for their base salaries. (Goldman's other 25,000 employees are still slated to receive their taxpayer-subsidized reward for a job well done.) Don't fret for ceo Lloyd Blankfein, though. In 2007, the company paid him $68.5 million, a figure that must make Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who averaged a mere $11 million a year during his eight-year stint at Goldman's helm, a little jealous.

[Read the full article]

You Are the Best Readers Ever

—By Monika Bauerlein

| Tue Jan. 6, 2009 2:09 PM PST

onion_opinion479.article.jpg A couple of weeks ago we posted about the tough financial times we've encountered as a result of some funders pulling back on previously made commitments (plus of course the general economic meltdown). We asked you to help fill the hole they left--and because you are awesome, you did. We're going into the new year leaner, meaner, but close enough to our fighting weight to take on whatever stories our crack investigative reporters encounter. (Job One: Keep tabs on the new administration, not to mention that line of bailout applicants stretching around the block.) We'll spend your money carefully and we hope you like (and are outraged by) the results.

While we're on house news, next week (we think) we're launching our brand new website—same content, but much better presented and with a spiffy new commenting system that builds on what we've learned from you over the years. Thanks again for being part of the MoJo community. And P.S. The subscriptions department kind of told us not to mention this, but we're going to anyway: There's a super secret special offer going on now whereby you get a MoJo subscription for a year PLUS a pound of Peace Coffee for $10. That's less than a pound of Starbucks! And then you can be just like this guy.

Pray for the Dead, Fight Like Hell for the Living: Goodbye Al Meyerhoff

—By Monika Bauerlein

| Sat Dec. 27, 2008 4:38 PM PST

Everyone here was stunned to read the news a couple of days ago that Al Meyerhoff, a fighting lawyer who among other things exposed the Saipan scam (whereby American manufacturers have products made in sweatshops in the U.S. protectorate, then slap a "Made in USA" label on them--legally), has died at age 61. Al served for a few years on MoJo's board; he was a memorable presence, expounding in his booming voice—and, later, via the emails that regularly showed up in our inboxes, and no doubt a few thousand others—on this or that corporate or political outrage. He once told a student magazine that he'd developed his "active dislike of the abuse of power" from having been bullied as a kid. Those bullies messed with the wrong guy. We'll miss him a lot.

How Would You Say "Goodbye, George W. Bush"? Tell Him

—By Monika Bauerlein

| Thu Dec. 25, 2008 11:09 PM PST

Office sort of quiet? Itching to spice up dinner conversation at the in-laws'? Dying to test drive the camera Santa brought? How about making an entry for our "Goodbye, George W. Bush" video contest? Put your 30-second (or so), PG-13 video on YouTube labeled "Mother Jones Goodbye Bush Video" and send us the link at mojobushvideo@gmail.com; all styles of entries are welcome, from simply talking at the camera to fancier stuff. Winners will be featured on the MoJo site and get prizes, not to mention more YouTube views than Straight No Chaser.
P.S. Spread the word! Contests are only as good as the number of entries they get, and we can't afford to advertise--so tweet, blog, and link away.