November/December 2009 Issue

Extreme Makeover: Seafood Edition

Marketers gave these former trash fish new names—and transformed them from gross to gourmet.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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NEW NAME

OLD NAME

STORY

Orange roughy

Slimehead

Originally named for its mucus-covered head

Torbay sole

Witch

Renamed by UK grocer Marks & Spencer after a picturesque English bay

Rock salmon/hass

Spiny dogfish

The result of an $8.5 million ’70s campaign to rebrand “underutilized species”

Silverbrite salmon

Chum salmon/dog salmon

One of the cheapest kinds of salmon, it has canine-like fangs.

Peekytoe crab

Rock crab

Considered essentially worthless till the mid-’90s; now the darling of trendy restaurants

Scarlet snapper

South African hake, Malabar blood snapper

“Anything that is red is going to be sold as red snapper, no matter what it is,” says one restaurant supplier.

Blue cod

Oilfish

Like escolar, oilfish is known for its laxative effect.

Source: Marine Policy

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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