March/April 1998 Issue

Foreign Currency

Keeping up worldwide

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With most magazines targeting ever narrowing niches, publications that claim the whole world as their province are a welcome counterbalance. The comparatively comprehensive visions they offer remind us that the world is far too complicated to fit neatly on an advertising rate card.

WORLD
TRADE		 DOLLARS
AND SENSE		 THE ECONOMIST WORLD
WATCH		 COLORS
Cover
Slogan		 For the
executive
with global
vision		 What’s left
in economics		 No slogan Working for a sustainable
future		 A magazine about the rest of the world
Which
really
means…		 Sweatshops
offer great
corporate value!		 Globalization is a corporate plot. They save their superficial
marketing slogans
for billboards
and direct mail campaigns.		 They’ll be working for a
long, long time.		 Printing in two languages
means only half as much copy is required.
Typical
reader		 Larval
shipping
magnate		 Coffeehouse
revolutionary		 Armchair
policy wonk		 A fellow
contributor		 Hip, affluent
American
pretending
to learn
foreign language
Enemies
list		 Trade barriers,
currency
controls,
human rights		 World Trade subscribers,
NAFTA,
Alan Greenspan		 Political leaders,
protectionism,
sanctions		 Fossil fuels,
carbon dioxide,
man		 People who
wear the same
sweater year
after year,
lint
The future
looks different,
depending
on how you
look at it		 “Opportunities…
have melded
with technology
and reform
to transform
many smaller,
so-called
backwater countries
into economic
dynamos.”		 “In line with
a recent
corporate trend,
Chairman
Louis V. Gerstner Jr. and other top
executives…will
retain their
private offices,
but everyone else
will work in
virtually doorless,
walless cubicles.”		 “Some scientists
believe that
pharmacogenomics—
the discipline of
finding the genes
that are responsible
for different
reactions to
drugs—could
be the quickest
route to better
drugs for everyone
from cancer
to cholesterol.”		 “A study…
suggests that
the warmer
ocean temperatures
expected from a doubling of
carbon dioxide will resemble
semi-permanent El Niño
conditions.”		 “[Edible] plates may represent the future of
packaging. And, with 20 percent of the world’s
population starving or malnourished, they might one day represent the future of food, too.”
Achilles’
heel		 Worldwide overcapacity “As the final reports drone
from the stage in four lanuages, many nap.”		 Information
overload		 Advertisers aren’t into
sustainable anything.		 Typical fashion enthusiast
has limited understanding
of deadpan irony
Number of
globes/maps		 29 1 14 7 0

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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