March 21, 2008

Mother Jones Nominated for Two National Magazine Awards

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Yesterday, we got the exciting news that Mother Jones has been nominated for two National Magazine Awards.

The NMAs are like our industry’s Academy Awards. On May 1st, editors from all over the country gather in New York (totally coincidentally, where most editors live), get dressed up, go to Jazz at Lincoln Center, fix gracious smiles on our faces, and wait to see if we win an Ellie (a replica of an Alexander Calder sculpture of an elephant—i.e. our Oscar—that could double as a rather stylish weapon).

This year we’ve been nominated for General Excellence (think Best Picture, the word “coveted” is often applied) for these three issues. We’re up against four other great, all very different, magazines in our circ size: Radar, Philadelphia Magazine, Foreign Policy, and Paste.

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My friend and former MoJoer John Cook emailed to joke: “We’re gonna totally kick your ass! MoJo and Foreign Policy will split the ‘stuff people should care about’ vote leaving Radar to sweep….” But I would never count Radar out (it’s so cheeky!), and then there’s Paste, which I give to about 40 friends for Christmas each year (d’oh!), and Foreign Policy and Philadelphia, like us, perennial contenders that are just as good as ever. (FP won last year.)

The other nomination is for photojournalism. Specifically this awesome photo essay by Lana Šlezić on the plight of the women of Afghanistan. In this category, we’re up against The New Yorker, National Geographic, Aperture, and Virginia Quarterly Review, which is edited by our MoJo contributing writer Ted Genoways, who just happened to write the text for our last photo essay. So we’ll try to be extra gracious if he wins.

These nominations are a nice nod to all the hard work put in by staff over the past year, one in which we overhauled the magazine and the site (tho’ more to come) and added a seven-person Washington bureau. Monika and I are really grateful to be working with such cool, hardworking, and amazingly (esp. given what we’ve put ’em through) sane people. So thanks to them, and we hope the rest of you keep reading.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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