Dear Mother Jones Reader, This is a story about how we—you, and us here at Mother Jones—beat Jeff Bezos.
Nine days before the 2024 election, the billionaire Washington Post owner decreed that the Post should no longer endorse presidential candidates. Five weeks after sitting onstage at Donald Trump’s second inauguration, he announced that the Post’s opinion pages would henceforth publish only stories endorsing “free markets and personal liberties.” Fast forward two years, and the Post laid off so many journalists, not even the editor in chief could say for sure whether he’d lost one-third or half the newsroom. It was all truly shocking.
Except none of it should have surprised us. The problem with American journalism has always been that we entrusted this vital public service to (mostly) for-profit companies whose allegiance could, and would, shift with the political winds and the bottom line.
That is why Mother Jones is independent—from billionaires, corporations, and any other deep-pockets owner. We’re only answering to our readers. To you. As a MoJo reader, you already knew that. But that’s why I think you’ll be happy to hear this news: Starting today, we have a generous $50,000 match for all donations made through Friday. Gifts from readers like you help keep us fiercely independent and telling the truth about those in power.
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Your donations keep our newsroom strong. For 25 years now, we’ve heard that giant sucking sound of newsrooms being emptied out across the country. In 2000, newspaper employment stood at 425,000. By December of 2025, that number was down to 78,000—a drop of more than 80 percent. Coal mining jobs, by comparison, have declined about 45 percent.
Which brings us back to Mother Jones. We were founded 50 years ago this year (!!) as an independent nonprofit precisely because it was clear, even then, that accountability journalism was never going to be the driving passion of a corporate owner. Instead, our founders went out to see if people would support a newsroom that was accountable to no one but its readers, and hundreds of thousands did.
Would you join them? |
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Fifty nail-biting, scratching and clawing, experimenting and innovating years later, we are still here, and bigger—if not in budget, then in impact—than many for-profit newsrooms. Our team is about a tenth the size of the Washington Post’s, but our audience on YouTube and Instagram is bigger than theirs. Their print circulation is down 90 percent from 20 years ago; ours is up about 10 percent from that time. Would MoJo have made good use of the piles of cash—at least $700 million—that Bezos sank into the Post during that time? Hell, it would have covered our entire budget for all that time, and well into the second half of this century. Was it hard getting by without that, and am I crazy proud of our team for doing better than a billionaire despite it all? Absolutely.
And who else am I crazy proud of and grateful for? You. You are the only reason we are still here after 50 years, the reason we have been able to hang in there and even grow as the corporate media crumbled around us. You are why we can stand strong as others bend the knee.
Every donation Mother Jones receives from readers fortifies our newsroom, whether we’re reporting on the administration’s attempt to rewrite American history or covering the most important news of the day. And this week, each donation will be doubled because of our $50,000 match. So when you make a donation—whether it’s $5, $10, $50—it’ll go twice as far.
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Together, we rally around journalism that isn’t afraid to question those in power. Together, we beat Bezos and all his billions. While corporate media crumbles, the team here at Mother Jones is steeling ourselves for what comes next. So thank you and bravo. In solidarity, |
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Monika Bauerlein, CEO
Mother Jones |
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