Clara Jeffery: What nonprofit news orgs are betting on for 2012
We’re wrapping up 2011 by asking some of the smartest people in journalism what the new year will bring. Next up is Clara Jeffery, co-editor of Mother Jones.
Rep. Bachmann’s Guinea Pig Kids II Compares Public School Ed To Concentration Camps
Did you know GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann made a movie? It's true! Back in 2002, when she was making a name for herself as an education activist with the Maple River Education Coalition, Bachmann collaborated with a man named Michael Chapman to make a film called (rather delightfully) Guinea Pig Kids II. At the...
MoJo’s digital ad revenue: up 97 percent over last year
We wrote earlier this year about some optimism-inspiring traffic gains over at Mother Jones: This February — long before Osama bin Laden's death spiked traffic stats for many mags in MoJo's league — the site saw a 420-percent increase in traffic from the previous year. And while the trendlines have settled down a bit from...
FEC Report: Rep. Bachmann Spent Nearly $4,700 On Hair And Makeup Since June
As this campaign finance cycle comes to a close, presidential candidates are required by FEC rules to disclose their budgets and spending, and nearly every candidate's expensive will generate their own headline. Yesterday, it was the unexpected closing of Newt Gingrich's Tiffany's credit line. Today, it's something that, with traction, could do harm...
Rachel Maddow Dives Into Palin Email Dump With Journalist Who Requested Emails In 2008
While the thousands of pages of email correspondence released this week from the years Sarah Palin was governor of Alaska have yet to provide any smoking guns, they certainly have their amusing moments, as Rachel Maddow explored last night. Among them, messages about controversial religious figures, some notes about rumors surrounding her family,...
Mother Jones web traffic up 400+ percent, partly thanks to explainers
February was a record-breaking traffic month for Mother Jones. Three million unique users visited the site — a 420 percent increase from February 2010's numbers. And MotherJones.com posted 6.6 million pageviews overall — a 275 percent increase. The investigative magazine credits the traffic burst partly to a month of exceptional work in investigations, essays, and...
Indiana Deputy Attorney General Fired for Boneheaded Tweeting
In case you needed one, here's a "Think before you tweet" reminder, courtesy of the Indiana Attorney General's office, which has fired an employee who used Twitter to suggest that the best way to deal with protesters in Wisconsin would be to "Use live ammunition." Mother Jones has the details.
MoJo’s Egypt explainer: future-of-context ideas in action
This week's unrest in Egypt brings new relevance to an old question: How do you cover an event about which most of your readers have next to no background knowledge? Mother Jones has found one good way to do that. Its national reporter, Nick Baumann, has produced a kind of on-the-fly topic page about this...
Mother Jones Couldn’t Decide Between “Heady” Haiti Cover Or “Rip-Roaring” Pot Cover
Over at Mother Jones they had a tough decision for their January/February issue. They had two big stories inside, one on the still slow-to-arrive relief in Haiti, the other on the marijuana business and the push for legalization. They liked both articles, but which one to put on the cover; the depression one or the...
The Newsonomics of journalist headcounts
Daily newspaper employment is still the big dog, responsible for a little less than two-thirds of the journalistic output, though down from levels of 80 percent or more. When someone tells you that the loss of newspaper reporting isn't a big deal, don't believe it. While lots of new jobs are being created -- that...
Spending the Summer in ‘Journalist Law School’
Education content on MediaShift is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.New...
