MOTHER JONES STAFF 2010–11 Foundation for National Progress
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MOTHER JONES annual report SMART READER- FEARLESS SUPPORTED MULTIMEDIA MUCKRAKING NONPROFIT exposing vivian maier INTERACTIVE AWARD- STORYTELLING WINNING artcredit tk artcredit tk artcredit 46 MOTHER JONES | may/june 2011 Vivian_363.indd 46 3/14/11 4:00:06 PM REVELATORY JOURNALISM COLLABORATIVE 2010-2011 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS A NOTE FROM OUR CEO AND PUBLISHER 2 MISSION STATEMENT 4 Smart, Fearless Journalism WHAT WE DO 5 FOUNDATION FOR NATIONAL PROGRESS TRANSFORMATION: PUTTING THE MEDIA IN MULTIMEDIA 6 INTERACTIVES: SHOWING THE STORY 8 IMPACT: MAKING THE NEWS 10 RECOGNITION: AWARD-WINNING JOURNALISM 16 CONTRIBUTORS AND SUPPORTERS 22 BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND STAFF 31 FINANCIALS: STATEMENTS OF ACTIVITIES 34 HOW YOU CAN HELP 38 A NOTE FROM OUR CEO AND PUBLISHER dear friends, On behalf of everyone at Mother Jones, we’re delighted to share our 2010-11 annual report with you. While reflecting on the highlights of the last two years, one word kept resonating in our mind: connected. Since our first issue in 1976, Mother Jones has sought practical yet innovative ways to make our delved into the regulatory mess that allowed the spill to happen in the first journalism accessible to interested readers. In 1993, for example, we became place, and Julia Whitty investigated the scientific and ecological impact of the the first general interest national magazine to launch a website, while more spill. This collaborative effort earned big kudos from our friends in the media recently we’ve pioneered the use of social-media sites like Twitter to break industry: Stories related to the BP spill won awards from the Sidney Hillman stories, galvanize readers, and deliver real-time updates. As this report makes Foundation, the Society of Professional Journalists-Northern California, and clear, Mother Jones has evolved into a truly multimedia organization with the Online News Association. unprecedented reach. Although accolades are gratifying, the real measure of success is how Nothing illustrates this better than perhaps the biggest story of 2011: the our journalism impacts readers. In that regard, 2010 and 2011 were explosion of social protest around the world. In our March/April 2011 issue, benchmark years. Pageviews to MotherJones.com increased by 88 percent we featured a series of 11 charts and graphics illustrating America’s dramatic year-over-year, while we saw gains of greater than 200 percent on social income inequality. Within hours of migrating online, the charts went viral, media. We also continued to see significant growth from our mobile site netting millions of viewers, considerable commentary by other media outlets, and email lists, proving that Mother Jones connects people—not only to and a laugh on The Colbert Report. Soon after, they showed up on a wall at the great journalism, but to each other, to their communities, and to a more occupied Wisconsin Statehouse, and seven months later, as the first occupiers passionate investment in today’s urgent issues. hit Zuccotti Park and a new movement was born. Those same 11 charts we Of course, we couldn’t do any of this without the support and generosity of published were reprinted on T-shirts, banners, and placards, and projected onto our donors. Thanks to you, Mother Jones remains a formidable example of building walls. When reporters Josh Harkinson and Gavin Aronsen began live- what independent, nonprofit journalism can accomplish. As we close out our tweeting the protests from New York City and Oakland, it felt as if Mother Jones fourth decade of operations, Mother Jones is as lively, groundbreaking, and, yes, had come full circle: from inspiring people to action to reporting on what that fearless as ever. action was accomplishing. Similarly, team coverage of the BP oil spill in 2010 utilized many of the same with deepest gratitude, reporting techniques to compelling effect. Mac McClelland covered the spill on Twitter, breaking news far ahead of the mainstream media, while Kate Sheppard tackled the environmental and policy angles from DC, Josh Harkinson Madeleine Buckingham, President and CEO Steven Katz, Publisher 2 3 Mother Jones WHAT WE DO Mother Jones is one of the largest and longest-running independent, nonprofitinves - tigative news organizations in the country. We specialize in in-depth reporting and up-to-the-minute news coverage, and we’re continuously exploring the most promis- ing innovations in journalistic practices that strengthen our ability to tell compelling stories, help us reach new audiences, and encourage a culture of experimentation. MISSION STATEMENT Mother Jones magazine and MotherJones.com Winner of eight National Maga- zine Awards—the Oscars of the industry—and with a crew of 71 staff and fellows based in San Francisco, Washington, DC, and New York City, Mother Jones is published by the Mother Jones produces revelatory journalism that, in nonprofit Foundation for National Progress. Mother Jones is not only a thought-leading publication in print, with a paid circulation of more than 200,000; online, MotherJones its power and reach, seeks to inform and inspire a more .com is a 24/7 digital news shop that anchors an engaged, vibrant online community of just and democratic world. The nonprofit Foundation for more than 3 million people per month. National Progress publishes Mother Jones magazine and The Ben Bagdikian Fellowship Program Named in honor of the legendary inves- MotherJones.com, directs the Ben Bagdikian Fellowship tigative reporter Ben Bagdikian, Mother Jones’ internship program is one of the largest and most rigorous in the nation. Over the past 30 years, more than 700 interns and fellows have Program, and provides fiscal and administrative support benefited from intensive real-world exposure and participation in the essentials of investi- for innovative media projects. gative reporting. Those Alumni have gone on to work at outlets ranging from the New York Times Magazine to Wired to Rolling Stone. Thirteen veterans of the program are currently on staff at Mother Jones as reporters, editors, and in business leadership positions. A center for innovation and incubation Mother Jones is an incubator for new approaches, including iterative reporting by our staff journalists, interactive storytell- ing, video and multimedia reporting, collaboration across organizational boundaries, and partnerships that leverage diverse expertise into joint projects with outsize impact. As part of this commitment, we continue to support innovative projects as well as pioneer our own collaborations across the media world. Social media on the rise 2010–11 TRANSFORMATION: Putting the Media in Multimedia Changing the way we do journalism: That’s been part of Mother Jones since we launched 100 the first general-interest magazine website back in 1993. Thanks to your support, 2010 90 and 2011 were the years when Mother Jones made the pivot to a full-on, multiplatform, print and digital, do-it-everywhere-all-the-time news organization—while we held firm 80 to our roots in deep-dive investigative reporting.. 70 Take our team coverage of the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, for example: on-the- 60 ground investigative journalism in real time distributed to thousands of users via social media and the newly redesigned MotherJones.com. Led by MoJo human rights reporter 50 Mac McClelland, who spent 120 days on the Gulf Coast, the Mother Jones reporting team 40 published more than 300 blog posts, articles, and photo essays documenting the abysmal response and the environmental and human crises that followed. 30 In the wake of the rise of the tea party and the 2010 midterm elections, our commitment 20 to breaking news coverage continued. Andy Kroll spent a month in Wisconsin, where he January 2010 slept alongside protesters on the capitol floor, followed every development in the union 10 fight, and broke the story that tied the Koch brothers to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s Thousands of Fans/Followers Thousands 0 December 2011 attack on public-sector unions. In 2011, Mother Jones deployed Josh Harkinson to Zuccotti Facebook Twitter Park for months of daily coverage on the Occupy movement in New York City, along with nationwide up-to-the-minute coverage of the movement from coast to coast. This was a time not only of protest at home, but also of upheaval throughout the Middle East. During the Arab Spring, Mother Jones launched our much-praised “explainer” series— Traffic explodes 2010–11 regularly updated, easy-to-follow digests that combined original reporting with curation of the best dispatches, graphics, and images from other news sources, all organized in real- 80 time chronology. 70 We also used new journalistic tools to open our investigations up to readers. Our “Terror- 60 ists for the fbi” project —led by Trevor Aaronson’s award-winning feature on fbi infor- mants—offered readers a searchable database of 508 post-9/11 domestic terrorism defen- 50 dants, with information drawn from thousands of pages of court documents. 40 Speaking of interacting with our readers, social media played a game-changing role in how Mother Jones showcased stories throughout 2010 and 2011. Twitter, Facebook, 30 Tumblr, and other user-driven communities saw a 188 percent increase in visitors referred to MotherJones.com. Content—especially charts, graphs, and videos—went 20 viral as Mother Jones developed an entirely new audience of online readers hungry for 2010 accurate, fascinating investigative journalism. And the impact was clear: With more 10 than 70 million pageviews in 2011, MotherJones.com saw a staggering 88 percent traffic Millions 0 2011 increase compared to 2010. Uniques Visits Pageviews 6 7 Mother Jones “Terrorists for the fbi” INTERACTIVES: Showing the Story Winner of the 2012 Data Journalism Award from the Global Editors Network Maps, charts, graphics, and interactive features each tell stories in unique ways. Combine “By far the best investigative piece [of all one or all with powerful narrative storytelling and the result can be explosive, ready to be applicants]…it shows the significant effort shared with millions.