December 30, 2013

The Top 10 MoJo Longreads of 2013


Conventional wisdom says that people won’t read lengthy magazine stories online, but MoJo readers regularly prove otherwise. Many of our top traffic-generating stories have been deeply researched investigations and reported narratives—and we find that plenty of readers stick with them to the bitter end. Our readers also comment, Tweet, Facebook, and Tumble enthusiastically, citing details found deep within these stories. So here, for your New Year’s pleasure, is a selection of 10 of our best-loved longreads from 2013. (Click here for last year’s list and here for our 2011 list, or, for something totally different, check out our hate-reads list for the stories that made us pull out our hair in 2013.)

Merchants of Meth: How Big Pharma Keeps the Cooks in Business
With big profits on the line, the drug industry is pulling out campaign-style dirty tricks to keep selling the meds that cooks turn into crank.
By Jonah Engle
 

America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead
New research finds Pb is the hidden villain behind violent crime, lower IQs, and even the ADHD epidemic. And fixing the problem is a lot cheaper than doing nothing.
By Kevin Drum
 

Gagged by Big Ag
Horrific abuse. Rampant contamination. And the crime is…exposing it?
By Ted Genoways
 

Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin.
It’s insanity to kill your father with a kitchen knife. It’s also insanity to close hospitals, fire therapists, and leave families to face mental illness on their own.
By Mac McClelland
 

Welcome, Robot Overlords. Please Don’t Fire Us?
Smart machines probably won’t kill us all—but they’ll definitely take our jobs, and sooner than you think.
By Kevin Drum
 

My Heart-Stopping Ride Aboard the Navy’s Great Green Fleet
With Washington frozen solid on climate, the Navy is breaking the ice.
By Julia Whitty
 

Is PTSD Contagious?
It’s rampant among returning vets—and now their spouses and kids are starting to show the same symptoms.
By Mac McClelland
 

Why Your Supermarket Sells Only 5 Kinds of Apples
And one man’s quest to bring hundreds more back.
By Rowan Jacobsen
 

Are Happy Gut Bacteria Key to Weight Loss?
Imbalances in the microbial community in your intestines may lead to metabolic syndrome, obesity, and diabetes. What does science say about how to reset our bodies?
By Moises Velasquez-Manoff
 

What’s It Like to Wake Up From a Tea Party Binge? Just Ask Florida!
Kids locked up in nursing homes. Leaky sewers. Mosquitoes unleashed. The Sunshine State has buyer’s remorse.
By Stephanie Mencimer
 

Click here to browse more great longreads from Mother Jones.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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