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The autocrat of the coffee table
By James Poniewozik
TV Guide, America's favorite coaster, becomes history in spite of itself
(08/05/98)

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WILL MOTHER JONES BECOME MORE POLITICALLY CORRECT? | PAGE 1, 2
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The problems facing the new editor were several-fold. Founded as an unapologetically leftist magazine (and named after a socialist labor agitator), Mother Jones had spent its adolescence working to dominate a relatively marginal pigeonhole. Then, with the end of the Cold War, the dissolution of an identifiable left and the eventual demise of the Reagan-Bush era, the pigeonhole disappeared. Thrust onto the same playing field as corporate-sponsored general interest magazines like Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, Mother Jones found itself in a cut-throat field with little to protect itself but its good intentions.

Within this larger context, however, there loomed a more trenchant problem: the magazine's ideologically motivated board. As Harris explains it, the board has always been at least as interested in the magazine's function as a soapbox as it has in its function as a business. "This is not an institution about making money, so the board is very engaged in the essence of the editorial," notes Harris. "I would love it if they were more interested in how many copies we sell, but quite frankly, they're not."

Douglas Foster insists he never felt pressure to pursue certain stories or back away from others while he oversaw the magazine. But board members were more vociferous with Klein, and he, in turn, was not particularly shy about giving many of the left's sacred cows a good sharp jab in the ass.

As an editor, Klein had no taste for party-line politics or soul-searching treatises. He favored political analysis over propaganda, investigative journalism over essays, Washington reports over grass-roots political coverage. He also shifted the magazine's focus away from sexual politics and culture. In the early days, that strategy led to a few missteps. Klein passed on one reflective story (a memoir about the American suburban culture shaped by the aerospace industry penned by former MoJo editor David Beers) that later won a 1994 National Magazine Award for Harper's magazine. Meanwhile, an incoherent Barbara Grizzuti Harrison essay on the O.J. Simpson case was rushed through production for the sake of timeliness and star value. And in 1995, Klein's preoccupation with Beltway politics led him to entirely overlook the significance of the militia movement brewing closer to home.

Still, Klein steadily increased the magazine's reputation, advertising revenue and subscription renewals. By 1995, Mother Jones was making political waves in Washington. An intensive investigation into Newt Gingrich's GOPAC scandal aired the charges that later led to the speaker's censure by the House Ethics Committee. In 1996, the magazine published a package of groundbreaking pieces on the tobacco industry and launched its now trademark list of the top 400 political contributors in the USA. A 1997 investigative piece on high-powered Republican political operative Don Sipple led to his resignation from one campaign and brought the magazine into the full glare of the talk-show circuit.

While he honed the magazine's investigative edge, Klein began his self-appointed task of "reshaping progressivism." One of the first issues he edited featured an article highly critical of women's studies programs. The story produced a predictable howl of protest from more doctrinaire feminists, but it was journalistically unassailable. Over time, however, Klein's Mother Jones punched hot buttons less intelligently.

From 1995 on, each issue sliced and diced a central theme into a mix-and-match bouquet of short, often unevenly reported stories slapped together in a "cover package." When the projects were investigative, the results were often stunning. When it came to softer social issues, however, they often were poorly written, ineffective and unfocused.

At worst, this piecemeal approach reduced the cover package to a sort of boilerplate packed with didactically predictable morsels of do-gooderism. There was a three-piece package on teen sex; a four-piece package on race; a six-piece package on spirituality; and a seven-piece package on "natural capitalism." On those occasions, sitting down to face the magazine felt about as alluring as tucking into a plate of day-old liver.

The special issues on race and spirituality, which were published as circulation was flattening and the deficit was rising, brought the always simmering political tensions on the board to a boil. The issues appeared during an extended leave of absence Klein began in early 1997 after his wife of more than two decades died of breast cancer. To much of the editorial staff's dismay, Klein appointed long-term art director Kerry Tremain as acting editor in his stead. Staffers feared that Tremain was a New-Age granola-muncher with no interest in investigative work and little understanding of politics. Their fears proved well-founded, they said, when Tremain brought out the magazine's race issue, which they criticized as poorly thought-out and dominated by predictable white bylines. Klein had a hand in the issue, penning a decidedly non-left editorial calling for an end to affirmative action.

"I was incredibly disappointed," says one editor who has since left the magazine. "I had told all my friends that we were going to publish something really creative and thought-provoking and original. I was embarrassed to show it to anyone."

The race issue also set many board members' teeth grinding. It particularly galled magazine co-founder and longtime board member Adam Hochschild. Heir to a South African mining fortune that he used to almost single-handedly bankroll Mother Jones for almost two decades, Hochschild has always been more ideologically pure than Klein. Friends with Klein for some 28 years, he was appalled by the race issue. "It was a direct affront to people who had actually worked on civil rights issues," says one board member who did not wish to be named.

For all the resentment caused by the race package, however, it was the following issue that sealed Klein's fate -- a spirituality special published during the 1997 holiday season. Never mind that the issue was the magazine's top seller of the year: The board was flummoxed.

"The spirituality issue was completely off-target," said the board member. "The real question, was, why is Mother Jones doing this? This could have been done by any general interest magazine. It had nothing to do with progressivism."

Trying to right the situation, Klein asked Tremain to resign and resumed day-to-day management. He hired Ana Marie Cox, one of the smart-ass Wunderkinder from online magazine Suck, as features editor and ponied up for design director Rhonda Rubinstein, a highly paid import from Wired, Esquire and Smart, in an effort to build circulation among younger readers.

But Klein's energy was flagging, and the board was fed up. At the June board meeting, the conflicts reached a head. According to one board member, Klein met continuing complaints about the months-old race and spirituality issues in a "bumptious, defensive and feisty manner. He attacked the board for meddling too much."

Another board member, Price Cobbs, believes that the board had decided that Klein simply wasn't "left enough." Cobbs also believes that that loss of faith led the board to lose interest in raising money for Klein's financially foundering version of Mother Jones.

In the end Klein characterizes his decision to leave as "spur of the moment." He will stay on as editor through the end of his contract in February. "I want to stress that I've had a great run at Mother Jones," he says.

David Corn, the Nation's Washington correspondent and a contributor to Salon, believes Klein pulled off the tricky feat of publishing a surprising magazine in a left-wing environment that hates surprises. "Critics -- especially those on the left -- are incredibly quick to point out the latest turn to the right any time a publication steps off the beaten path," says Corn. "But Jeffrey figured out how to engage the dominant media without compromising progressive values. He pulled Mother Jones into the national debate much more than anyone else had managed to."

In spite of Klein's successes, the magazine will likely continue to struggle with its identity, says Cobbs: "Where do we go from here? What do we talk about? Do we sit around and be a bunch of naysayers who romanticize the '60s and a past that never was, or do we move forward?"

Fears that Klein's decision to leave indicates a victory for the backward-looking forces of political correctness have several editors contemplating a job search. Corn, a veteran of leftist reporting, is quick to sympathize. "If [Klein's departure] means a turn toward straight-laced identity politics and predictability, it's a bad sign," he says. "Magazines aren't political parties, and they're not movements. They're just magazines. They should be a smorgasbord of opinions, not have a pre-set code that has to be abided."
SALON | Aug. 24, 1998

Ashley Craddock is a San Francisco writer.