August 18, 2008

New AC/DC, G N’ R Albums To Be Wal-Mart Exclusives?

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mojo-photo-walmart.jpgLet me get this straight. The music industry is in crisis, as sales plummet and stores consider eliminating CD sections entirely. Artists with name recognition are exploring new avenues of distribution, bypassing the retail store entirely. So, say you’re a beloved rock band with a highly-anticipated new album coming out. What do you do? How about you force your fans to jump through ridiculous hoops and go on a freakin’ retail scavenger hunt just to track it down? Brilliant! And thus, AC/DC is requiring that anyone interested in their first new album in eight years, Black Ice, to get in the SUV and head out to Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club to pick it up (starting October 20th, for $11.88). Not to be outdone, Guns n’ Roses are in the midst of negotiations with either Wal-Mart or Best Buy for exclusive retail rights for the mythical Chinese Democracy. Ah, the music industry: answering complaints that its business model is inconvenient by making things more inconvenient. Well, just you wait; when I release my album, it will only be available on a ledge halfway up the side of K2.

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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.

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