Commonwealth Club: 50 Years of Mother Jones, with Adam Hochschild and Monika Bauerlein

San Francisco has a rich journalism history that includes being home to the nation’s first investigative news organization, Mother Jones. The independent, nonprofit news outlet started in 1976 in an office above a McDonald’s restaurant, and has been exposing wrongdoing among governments and corporations, and holding the powerful to account for 50 years. Mother Jones has built a large and loyal audience over the decades, and deftly adapted from a bimonthly magazine to meet audiences wherever they get their news—whether print, online, radio, video, social media, or newsletters.  The event will explore the origins of the revered news outlet, highlight its most influential investigations, examine how it is defending press freedoms in a lawsuit filed against OpenAI and confronting disinformation and propaganda head on, and discuss how nonprofit news is a sustainable model for other news outlets in the Bay Area and across the country. We’ll be joined by Adam Hochschild, Mother Jones’ co-founder and historian, and Monika Bauerlein, the CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting, which produces Mother Jones.