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In 2012, Mother Jones published an article about Melaleuca, a dietary-supplements company in Idaho, which had emerged as a top donor to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. Melaleuca’s CEO, a billionaire named Frank VanderSloot, was described as having “long been a controversial figure in Idaho politics, particularly when it comes to issues involving gays and lesbians.” That meant, at one point, paying for billboards in protest of a public television program for kids that depicted LBGTQ people in a respectful light. VanderSloot’s lawyers sent the magazine a complaint; the article contained some errors, which Mother Jones corrected. But later, VanderSloot filed a defamation suit. The magazine ultimately emerged victorious; the judge dismissed the case, citing New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. (VanderSloot wrote in statement that “gay people should have the same freedoms and rights as any other individual.”) And yet, Mother Jones—a nonprofit organization—declared, “The take-no-prisoners legal assault from VanderSloot and Melaleuca has consumed a good part of the past two and a half years and has cost millions (yes, millions) in legal fees.” (“I am proud of the part I have played in exposing Mother Jones for what it is,” VanderSloot wrote after the ruling. “It’s biased bullying of people with conservative values.”)
Since then, the legal climate has only grown more accommodating of the wealthy and powerful who seek to prevent and punish journalistic scrutiny. VanderSloot, for his part, established a “Guardian of True Liberty Fund” in order to “help pay for the legal expenses of people who have been defamed by Mother Jones magazine or other liberal press because of their conservative values.” He pledged a million dollars and encouraged others to join his fight. Elsewhere, cases piled up against other newsrooms, including the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal, which looked into funds provided by the United States government to a charity called Planet Aid, and the group’s connection to an alleged cult. Planet Aid’s libel suit played out over six years, culminating in 2022 with the largest-ever settlement under California’s anti-SLAPP statute: 1.925 million dollars. The financial drain ran CIR down. “These frivolous lawsuits increasingly brought against nonprofit newsrooms throughout the country could be a serious blow for democracy,” Victoria Baranetsky, the organization’s general counsel, said at the time. Not long after, Mother Jones and CIRannounced a story of their own: a merger.
A year later, the joint venture operates as a hundred-and-twenty-person team based in San Francisco, where CIR had already been subletting office space from Mother Jones, with additional bureaus in Washington and New York. “We had a bunch of people who are mostly experienced in print work and a bunch of people who are mostly experienced in audio—we all learned new tricks,” Clara Jeffery, the editor in chief, told me. They produce a magazine (with a hundred eighty-five thousand paying subscribers), two free websites (Mother Jones and Reveal), a weekly podcast (with more than a million listeners), and short videos for social media; there is also a film and TV studio. In March, they will debut an additional weekly podcast from Al Letson, Reveal’s longtime host. Their most ambitious project since combining forces has been an investigative series, “40 Acres and a Lie,” which scoured Reconstruction-era documents to identify more than a thousand Black Americans who were given land, only to have it returned to their former enslavers.
To make the merger possible, Mother Jones and CIR raised twenty-one million dollars in commitments from foundations and individual donors, supporting the first three years of the transition. Combining resources for insurance, fact-checking, and legal counsel felt critical, given both outlets’ recent experiences. “We certainly have a very rigorous fact-checking process for big investigations—but, you know, journalists can make mistakes,” Jeffery said. “I think the difference now is it will not matter whether or not there is a mistake. That’s the landscape that we’re entering into.” In the months leading up to his return to office, Donald Trump has placed emphasis on retribution, flinging lawsuits at ABC News (which settled), CBS News (which the network says is “completely without merit”), and the board of the Pulitzer Prizes (which filed a motion this week seeking that the case be halted during his presidency); he has also threatened legal action against the New York Times. (Adding to the pressure, after this summer’s assassination attempt, Trump said, at a rally, “To get me, someone would have to shoot through the fake news—and I don’t mind that so much.”)
Of course, the problem goes well beyond Trump, as more subjects of journalistic coverage feel empowered to file defamation suits, often shopping for states without anti-SLAPP laws. There are organizations for smaller publications that need legal support, including Lawyers for Reporters and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, “so that they can afford to continue operating in a way that’s risk conscious,” James Chadwick,who was Mother Jones’s legal counsel and is a First Amendment lawyer of more than thirty years, said. Those resources can also help outlets pursue open-records cases and other investigations. But across the news industry, money is tight, and even winning cases cost publications time and funds, he noted: litigation, Chadwick said, is the “sport of kings.”
In their new, more resilient form, the combined Mother Jones and CIR are turning outward, with a consultancy called CIR Media Services to help newsrooms manage their finances and operations. “It’s going to be so important for organizations, particularly independent news organizations, to think about combining forces and strengthen their financial, legal, and operational infrastructure,” Monika Bauerlein, the CEO of CIR, said. “We will be facing challenges that we’ve never faced before. And we need to overcome those silos. So we’re here for any organization that is exploring this and is curious what the experience was like.”
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