Logrolling in Our Times

Peeking into the pork barrel of political magazines

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


In today’s political arena, holding office is just a time-consuming distraction from the real task of running for office. After all, only perpetual campaigning can overcome rampant voter apathy and ever increasing industry competition. Political magazines are faced with essentially the same challenges, except their “elections” happen for them every time a new issue hits the newsstands.

Best cover line The vision thing Community outreach program The requisite intermedia mudslinging Gratuitous celebrity cross-promotion Blatant pandering
The Nation “Starr’s Grand Jury Abuses” “E.L. Godkin, the first Nation editor, is credited with being the first writer to use quotation marks to indicate skeptical irony.” Caribbean cruise where you can watch Nation columnists venomously snipe at each other in person rather than just in print. “On the much discussed matter of CNN’s wounded ‘credibility,’ the network has almost always whored for the Pentagon, shamelessly relaying its lies and evasions.” Two poems about 1998’s Most Intriguing Personality, Monica Lewinsky’s semen-stained dress. See left.
Mother Jones “Women and Booze” Make it look more like George: “Our redesign is based on the idea that crucial information and its presentation must amount to more than mere data — it should dare to be engaging.” Gourmet utility consumers who choose Green Mountain Energy Resources’ new “electricity blend” get a free subscription. You’re reading it. Four photos of probable voter Gillian Anderson. Big photo of drunken, bikini-clad coed with Miller beer box stuck over her postfeminist head.
George “Top 10 Funniest Politicians” Aims to be a lightweight piece of fluff you really shouldn’t read, but do: “…we don’t want this issue to be…some weighty tome you really should read but never do.” Special naked editor pull-out centerfold poster. (Not yet implemented.) “Over the years, CNN staffers have groused that the network’s bland, unsophisticated look has hurt ratings.” Four-page spread on obscure South African starlet who seems (understandably) confused about who’s interviewing her: “South Africans don’t have sexy presidents covered in People,” she says. “Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg traded her judicial robes for her party clothes.”
National Review “Al Gore’s Bogus Global Warming Crusade” “I have a dream. Suppose we wake up on New Year’s Day 2000 and find that the computers are right — it really is 1900.” Caribbean cruise where you can indulge in complimentary Hennessey and Montecruz cigars — and kiss William F. Buckley’s mottled patrician ass. “The online magazine Salon — generally an echochamber for the White House line — outlines the anti-Silberman case in detail.” WFB “Well, we were having the nicest time…when who sits down with us but WFB! I thought your father would faint!”
American Spectator “The Russians Rip Off NASA” “In due course we won’t have Mr. Clinton, or even Steven Brill, to kick around anymore, but the empty culture which brought them into being isn’t going away. Who might its new heroes be?” Allegedly subsidizes vast right-wing conspiracy of key Whitewater witnesses, bait-shop-owning spies, and other assorted Arkansan exotica. “Neither Miss Smith nor Mr. Glass will be invited back, though they are perfectly free to write for Salon magazine, where their fictive talents can be added to those of Mr. Jonathon Broder [and] Mr. Murray Waas.” Neo-Barris game show auteur, Ben Stein, writes regular column about being rich and mildly annoyed. Predictably ample “Asian Women Desire Romance! “mail-order chattel section. (Who says multiculturalism’s only for the left?)

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 canā€™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 wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”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.

payment methods

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 canā€™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 wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”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.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate