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.

Who You Calling a Print Magazine? MoJo Wins Online News Association Award

—By Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery

| Sun Oct. 31, 2010 12:32 AM PDT

Just in case the grins on the faces of reporter Kate Sheppard and news editor Dan Schulman don't tell you everything you need to know—yes, we are honored and proud today to have won the Online News Association award for Online Topical Reporting/Blogging for our team coverage of the BP spill. For much of the summer, Mother Jones actually had more reporters covering the disaster than most dailies or TV news operations around the country: Our human-rights reporter Mac McClelland was on the scene for four months while Kate in Washington kept up the heat on agencies and politicians, and environmental correspondent Julia Whitty explored the stunning new science that shows the true impact of BP. It was an amazing endeavor, involving literally everyone at MoJo at one point or another and drawing on major effort from many (reporters, editors, factcheckers, tech crew—you know who you are). You can read the results here.

Fun fact: As far as we can tell, Mother Jones was the only magazine (that doesn't publish exclusively online, a la Salon) honored at the ONA awards last night; the event has long been dominated by daily newspapers, broadcasters, and online-exclusive news sites, which makes sense given that much of the magazine industry has not exactly stampeded into digital news. Here at MoJo, though, we pretty much tore down the distinction between print and digital several years ago, and now aim to bring you sharp, sassy investigative reporting 24/7 via the Interwebs as well as in our award-winning print magazine (you do take advantage of our dead cheap subscriptions, right?). So hooray for an award confirming that that's working out okay—and an extra hooray for all the other great journalism shops honored last night, including our fellow nonprofits at NPR, ProPublica, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and California Watch. (Bonus hooray for these last two, fellow Bay Area operations. Now back to the World Series already in progress.)

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Are the Tea Partiers Being Taken for a Ride?

Voters beware—the head you're putting on the chopping block may be your own.

—By Clara Jeffery and Monika Bauerlein

| November/December 2010 Issue

Even in an election season marked by more than the usual dose of insanity, Dinesh D'Souza's Forbes cover story about Barack Obama, "How He Thinks," marks a new low. You remember D'Souza—last seen blaming the left for 9/11, but best known for noting that "the American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well" (and for dating both Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham). He'd found, he said, an explanation for Obama's "strange behavior"—bizarre stuff like noting that the BP disaster might have something to do with our addiction to fossil fuels.

The president, D'Souza assured Forbes readers, is neither "clueless" nor a socialist—the problem is something much, well, darker. "We have been blinded to his real agenda because, across the political spectrum, we all seek to fit him into some version of American history." But that's wrong, because Obama grew up in strange places "off the American mainland" (like...Hawaii), and is guided not by "the American dream" but the ideology of the Kenyan father he barely knew. "Incredibly," D'Souza gasped, "the US is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son."

[Read the full article]

Attack of the 50-Foot Palin

—By Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery

| Mon Oct. 25, 2010 3:00 AM PDT

It's not that there aren't enough clues on the cover of the new issue of Mother Jones—the headline, for one—but since you asked: Yes, that is a full-throated homage to the B movie classic Attack of the 50-Foot Woman. If you're like us, your knowledge of American cinema doesn't extend to the full plot of this 1958 gem, but suffice to say that it involves a wealthy heiress, Nancy Archer, who after an encounter with an alien is found on the roof of her pool house and soon grows into a giantess. She goes searching for her no-good husband and his mistress, Honey Parker (!), and mayhem ensues. We liked the image because of the subtle historical echoes and... oh, who are we kidding: We liked it because the poster is awesome. Wikimedia(The echoes, though, are there: 1958 was an election year, in a recession, that dealt President Eisenhower's party a big string of defeats and launched the Senate careers of, among others, Gene McCarthy, Robert Byrd, and Edmund Muskie.)

MoJo's creative director Tim Luddy encouraged illustrator Zina Saunders to follow the poster out the window in tone and feel, tweaking only the landscape to look more suburban. Saunders (who has cranked out a number of terrific Palin illustrations in the last couple of years) took the assignment very seriously, at one point sending a picture of Palin in her beauty-contestant days to confirm that she'd gotten the proportions right. She also made an animated version. Behold (this might take a sec to load):

What's Good for BP

From Old Spice Guy to Beyond Petroleum, companies do their best to endear themselves to us—but let's not forget where their real priorities are.

—By Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery

| September/October 2010 Issue

Read also: MoJo's complete BP coverage, Julia Whitty on the oil spill cover-up, and the rest of our special report on BP's deep ocean secrets.

The Deepwater Horizon spill was only about a month old—no spill-cam yet, no top kill or junk shot or umpteen other attempts to plug the cursed hole—when we saw a note from MoJo reporter Mac McClelland flicker across our tweet stream: "Has oil made landfall in Port Fourchon, LA? Can't look, bc cops turned us around at bridge to beach." Mac managed to run BP's blockade, and soon came tweets from another beach, including a picture of her foot with the caption, "This was when I realized oil arrived: when I stepped in crude."

That was just the beginning. Everywhere Mac went, she found government and corporate officials working hand in hand—sometimes literally, as with the BP spokeswoman married to a sheriff's deputy—to keep the public and press at bay. It was the same for reporters from CBS, ProPublica, Yahoo News, you name it. This wasn't about security or public health: Tourists were encouraged to hang out on the beaches, even as reporters were shooed away. No, it was the same principle that prompted the Bush administration to forbid photos of flag-drapped coffins: Nothing to see here, folks.

[Read the full article]

MoJo Writer Imprisoned in Iran: 365 Days is Too Long

—By Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery

| Sun Aug. 1, 2010 1:04 AM PDT

As we enjoy a summer weekend with friends and family, it bears remembering that, for the families and friends of Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Josh Fattal, this weekend marks a milestone of misery: As of Saturday, it had been exactly one year since the three were arrested while hiking in the scenic border region between Iraqi Kurdistan and Iran. Theories differ on exactly how the arrest took place: the three may have accidentally crossed the border, or they may have been snatched while inside Iraq. (Their traveling companion, Shon Meckfessel, who stayed behind that day because he had a cold, sent us a wrenching account of the last call he got from his friends.)

This much is for sure: They were not spies for the United States, as Iran has alleged (so far without pursuing the charge in its own courts). Bauer is a talented, muckraking journalist whose most recent story for Mother Jones looked at how the US government was using construction and other contracts to pay off corrupt ex-warlords in Iraq. (He also worked with the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and New America Media.) Shourd--who became engaged to Bauer while in prison in Iran--was teaching English to Iraqi kids in Damascus, where she lived with Bauer prior to their arrest. Fattal had worked at a sustainability center in Oregon and taught overseas. All of them have been held in near-isolation (Shourd is being held by herself, while the two men share a cell), without access to the Iranian lawyer their family has hired to them or the rest of the outside world. Their only contact with their families came in May, when the mothers were allowed to visit; both Shourd and Bauer have reportedly struggled with illness while in prison.

It's no surprise that the three are being used as pawns by the Iranian government—that's a trick just about every country has used. But a year is enough, especially for three people who have committed no offense except being insufficiently paranoid in exploring a tourist region world-renowned for its beauty. Nothing good can come from their languishing behind bars, whereas once released, they would likely go back to their work for truth and human rights. We hope that day comes soon.

There are vigils and protests throughout this weekend seeking the hikers' release; you can follow the Free the Hikers campaign on Twitter and Facebook. Even President Obama has weighed in. Read his statement after the jump.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]