Who’s Really Behind Newsweek?


When Newsweek reappeared on newsstands a few weeks ago after publishing its last print edition in 2012, it provided a jolt of instant credibility for its purchaser, International Business Times, the publisher of a website of the same name. But who is IBT? There have been rumors for some time that it was founded—and is still directed—by David Jang, the charismatic Korean leader of a Christian sect known as “the Community,” but those rumors have never really been confirmed.

Until now. In the latest issue of Mother Jones, Ben Dooley reports on the results of a multi-year investigation based on financial statements, thousands of internal messages, and dozens of sources. It turns out that IBT’s ties to Jang go much deeper than previously established:

  • The Jang-founded Olivet University and IBT are linked to a web of dozens of churches, nonprofits, and corporations around the world that Jang has influenced or controlled, with money from Community members and profitable ministries helping to cover the costs of money-losing ministries and Jang’s expenses.
  • IBT’s CEO and chief content officer have been in frequent contact with Jang about the direction of the company, receiving advice on personnel decisions, business strategy, and font selection.
  • Money from other Community-affiliated organizations funded IBT’s early growth.
  • Olivet students in the United States on international student visas say they worked for IBT full-time for as little as $125 a week.
  • Jang sees Community-affiliated media organizations, including IBT, as an essential part of his mission to build the kingdom of God on Earth.

As Dooley says in his article, there’s nothing unusual about business leaders associating with people or institutions that share their values. But if there’s nothing unusual about the ties that IBT’s leaders have to Jang and the Community, why have they been so eager to downplay them? Click the link to learn more.

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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.

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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.

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