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CHART: Withering Drought Still Plaguing Half of America

by gorso6 Posted on April 4, 2013

Mother Jones

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Click here for a larger version. James West

The $50 billion drought that bedeviled the country last Summer—the worst since the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s—still has its fingers around half the country. And if predictions are to be believed, it’s only going to get worse for many in the coming months.

Weekly drought figures released Thursday by the US Drought Monitor, a joint project of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the USDA and several other government and academic partners, show the situation has worsened slightly from last week, with nearly 52% of the continental US now suffering from a moderate drought or worse. Below-average winter snow pack and rainfall are keeping much of the country in a holding pattern. No measurable precipitation fell on most of central and northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin, central and northern Iowa, southwestern Minnesota, and the Louisiana Bayou last week. Rain that fell in the West did nothing to alleviate the drought there; in fact, parts of western Oregon and southwestern Washington have reported their driest start to a calendar year on record. The forecast for the next two weeks? Dry and dry again.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s climate prediction center warns today that drought is likely to persist for much of the West and expand across northern California and southern Oregon. Although the numbers are more optimistic across eastern Kansas and Oklahoma, with some rain on the way, drought still has a strong grip on much of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona due to low snow-water (around 75% of normal) heading into spring and early summer. That is just the latest in a battery of warning signs that show another brutal summer on its way: California experienced its driest January-February period on record, and average winter temperatures across the contiguous US were 1.9°F above the 20th century average.

These figures come on the back of the spring outlook from NOAA released two weeks ago that point to hotter, drier conditions coming up across much of the US, and with that, flooding.

In many parts of the country, drought in fact never loosened its grip, imperiling the winter wheat crop that sustains much of the US wheat industry.

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CHART: Withering Drought Still Plaguing Half of America

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The Tea Party’s Next Bogeyman: Obama’s Common Core Conspiracy

by Alison O'neil Posted on April 4, 2013

Mother Jones

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Last week, conservative talk show host and media mogul Glenn Beck decided to let his listeners in on what he dubbed “the biggest story in American history.” It’s called System X. “If you don’t stop it,” he warned, “American history is over as you know it.”

As Beck explained it, a little-known Department of Education program, supported by rich philanthropists, business interests, and the United Nations, was turning public schools into the world’s next great data-mining frontier. Using carrots offered up in the 2009 stimulus bill, the federal government and its contractors could compile hundreds of points of data on your kids and use it for who knows what. The result: “System X: a government run by a single party in control of labor, media, education, and banking; joined by big business to further their mutual collective goals.”

The gateway to this dystopian future, which Beck predicted would lead to some portions of the United States embracing Nazism, was President Barack Obama’s controversial push for a new national curriculum known as Common Core. The conspirators are far-ranging. Rupert Murdoch is in on it. So is the American Legislative Exchange Council, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Jeb Bush.

Chart: Almost Every Obama Conspiracy Theory Ever

Beck’s not the only person fighting Common Core. Lawmakers in 18 states have considered legislation to block the implementation of the curriculum standards. Five—Alaska, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia—have successfully rejected or partially rejected Common Core. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell reiterated his opposition to Common Core in late March, just one week after Texas Gov. Rick Perry went on Beck’s program to denounce it.

On the most basic level, the fight over Common Core is same fight parents and policymakers have been waging over public education for the last century, centering on two basic questions: What is the appropriate level of federal involvement in local schooling? And if we did settle on an umbrella curriculum, what should it actually look like? Education reformer Diane Ravitch, for one, opposes Common Core on the grounds that, while there should be a set of national education tenets, she believes “such standards should be voluntary, not imposed by the federal government.”

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The Tea Party’s Next Bogeyman: Obama’s Common Core Conspiracy

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Sen. Roy Blunt: Monsanto’s Man in Washington

by 2343b4u4u Posted on April 4, 2013

Mother Jones

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As I reported a couple of weeks ago, a recent Senate bill came with a nice bonus for the genetically modified seed industry: a rider, wholly unrelated to the underlying bill, that compels the USDA to ignore federal court decisions that block the agency’s approvals of new GM crops. I explained in this post why such a provision, which the industry has been pushing for over a year, is so important to Monsanto and its few peers in the GMO seed industry. (You can also hear my talking about it on NPR’s The Takeaway, along with the senator who tried to stop it, Montana’s Jon Tester, and see me on Al Jazeera’s Inside Story.)

Which senator pushed the rider into the bill? At the time, no one stepped forward to claim credit. But since then, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) has revealed to Politico’s ace reporter David Rogers that he’s the responsible party. Blunt even told Rogers that he “worked with” GMO seed giant Monsanto to craft the rider.

The admission shines a light on Blunt’s ties to Monsanto, whose home office is located in the senator’s state, Missouri. According to OpenSecrets, Monsanto first started contributing to Blunt back in 2008, when it handed him $10,000. At that point, Blunt was serving in the House of Representatives. In 2010, when Blunt successfully ran for the Senate, Monsanto upped its contribution to $44,250. And in 2012, the GMO seed/pesticide giant enriched Blunt’s campaign war chest by $64,250.

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Sen. Roy Blunt: Monsanto’s Man in Washington

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Whatever Happened to the Obama Administration’s Review of NYPD Spying?

by da3xs1z Posted on April 4, 2013

Mother Jones

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In early 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder promised members of Congress that the Justice Department was “actively looking at” the New York Police Department’s spying on American Muslims. Now, more than a year later, advocates—and two top Democrats—are still wondering what happened.

“I have patiently waited for the Department of Justice to complete its review of the situation, but it has been nearly two years since the story broke and over a year since the Department of Justice committed to doing a review of NYPD’s actions,” Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif), who was detained in an internment camp during World War II, told Mother Jones. Honda said that the Justice Department should “conduct a full investigation, not a simple review, of the NYPD’s numerous constitutionally questionable actions immediately.”

Muslim advocacy groups have regular interagency meetings with the federal government but have also received no official response on the matter. Nor has Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), who says he “first requested that the department conduct an investigation in response to news reports in September of 2011.” Since then, Holt adds, “I have received no substantive updates from the Justice Department, despite many follow-up inquiries. To my knowledge, no investigation has been conducted.”

Holder repeatedly promised lawmakers that the Justice Department was considering investigating the spying, telling Honda in February 2012 that the department was “reviewing” letters from members of Congress about the NYPD’s actions “to determine what action, if any, we should take.” The next month, the attorney general went even further: “Just what I’ve read in the newspapers is disturbing,” Holder told a Senate appropriations subcommittee on March 8, 2012. “There are various components within the Justice Department that are actively looking at these matters.”

The whole controversy began in August 2011, when the Associated Press published the first of a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of stories on an NYPD unit, established in 2002, that was advised by an official from the Central Intelligence Agency and engaged in broad surveillance and mapping of Muslim communities in New York and the surrounding region. (The CIA inspector general investigated the Agency’s involvement in the NYPD program concluding that its involvement was legal.) The unit’s operations were funded in part by federal grant money meant to help combat drug trafficking. Although an NYPD official admitted under oath that the unit’s work never led to a single investigation, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has defended the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslim communities as necessary “to keep this country safe.” A report by the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund found that the surveillance program had a “devastating effect” on Muslim communities in the New York area, causing Muslims to censor their speech, become suspicious of those around them, and to fear that their political or academic choices could draw attention from government authorities. Last June, the Muslim civil rights group Muslim Advocates filed a lawsuit against the NYPD alleging that the department’s surveillance program violated the constitutional rights of New Jersey Muslims.

Shortly after they broke, the Associated Press stories had caused enough of a stir that members of Congress were getting involved. Holt says he first asked the Justice Department to investigate the NYPD in September 2011. Thirty-four Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to Holder in December 2011 demanding a Justice Department investigation of the NYPD. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich sent a letter to Honda on February 1, 2012, assuring him that they were “reviewing your letter, the news reports that you reference, and other information regarding the allegation that law enforcement agencies may have violated the Constitution or federal law by singling out Muslims or others for police contact—stops and investigations—based upon their race, ethnicity or national origin.” Several weeks later, Holder publicly told members of both the House and Senate that the Justice Department was “reviewing” whether or not there needed to be an investigation.

Members of Congress have pressed Holder on the matter since—including at a private meeting of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus in September 2012. At that event, both Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and Honda both asked Holder in person about the review. Holder told them it was ongoing. Asked by Mother Jones, a DOJ spokeswoman suggested that the department still hasn’t made up its mind, adding that “we cannot comment on matters under review.”

The question of whether or not to investigate the NYPD’s surveillance activities pits two important Obama administration priorities against each other—its aggressive, often controversial efforts to prevent another terrorist attack on the United States, which have been frequently criticized by civil libertarians, and its reinvigoration of the Justice Department’s civil rights division. Since taking office, the special litigation section of the civil rights division has investigated more local police departments for unconstitutional policing than ever before, but never on behalf of American Muslims profiled by law enforcement.

Although Holder referred to the reports of the NYPD’s actions as “disturbing,” that’s not the view of everyone in the Obama administration. CIA Director John Brennan, formerly a top White House counterterrorism adviser, praised the NYPD’s surveillance program in April 2012. “I have full confidence that the NYPD is doing things consistent with the law, and it’s something that again has been responsible for keeping this city safe over the past decade,” Brennan said.

That was at odds with Holder’s initial take. “In performing these law enforcement functions, we have to take into account, you know, cost-benefit here,” Holder told the House appropriations committee in February 2012. “You do not want to alienate a community, a group of people, so that especially impressionable young people think that their government is against them. And then, you know, the siren song that they hear from people who they can access on the internet becomes something that becomes more persuasive to them.”

This piece previously stated that the CIA Inspector General was investigating the Agency’s involvement with the NYPD, that investigation has been concluded.

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Whatever Happened to the Obama Administration’s Review of NYPD Spying?

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Charts: How Foreign Firms Flood America With Guns—and Get Rich Doing It

by 7GrittonMaine146 Posted on April 4, 2013

Mother Jones

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In 1791, America’s founding fathers enacted a constitutional right to bear arms, in part to help citizen militias protect the homeland against foreign invaders. Some 300 years later, foreigners have become some of the Second Amendment’s biggest beneficiaries and shrillest advocates. The vast majority of the millions of guns we import each year—think Beretta, Glock, Taurus, and other name brands—come from countries with far stricter gun control laws than we have in the United States.

Every time another mass shooter unleashes a torrent of bullets in a school or theater, the world puzzles over America’s permissive approach to gun ownership. A story following up on the Sandy Hook massacre in Austria’s largest daily, Krone, noted the apparent link between “lax weapons laws” in the United States and our “high rate of gun killings, compared to other western nations.” But the newspaper didn’t mention how Austrian gun makers profit from and help perpetuate those lax weapons laws. In 2009, a whopping 67 percent of Austria’s gun exports went to the United States. Here’s the breakdown for our top 10 foreign suppliers.

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Charts: How Foreign Firms Flood America With Guns—and Get Rich Doing It

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One Weird Trick for Getting Republicans to Care About Climate

by HarralGeidl697 Posted on April 3, 2013

Mother Jones

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It’s a truism at this point to observe that Americans are deeply polarized—along party lines—on climate change. The surveys that have attested to this reality are, by now, too numerous to count.

But beneath that depressing surface, there’s a less appreciated and more hopeful reality. If it were somehow possible to strip away the overlay of angry political rhetoric—not to mention doing something about all the scientific misinformation that is constantly being broadcast and rebroadcast by the likes of Rush Limbaugh—a bipartisan political consensus on climate change might really be possible.

That’s one upshot of a new public opinion study by the climate public opinion dynamos at George Mason and Yale universities (the George Mason Center for Climate Change Communication and the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, respectively). The researchers surveyed 726 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, finding 77 percent support within this group for expanding US reliance on clean and renewable energy.

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One Weird Trick for Getting Republicans to Care About Climate

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Yes, Antibiotic-Resistant Bugs Can Jump from Animals to Humans

by jiigy3e Posted on April 3, 2013

Mother Jones

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For decades, the meat industry has denied any problem with its reliance on routine, everyday antibiotic use for the nation’s chickens, cows, and pigs. But it’s a bit like a drunk denying an alcohol problem while leaning on a barstool for support. Antibiotic use on livestock farms has surged in recent years—from 20 million pounds annually in 2003 to nearly 30 million pounds in 2011.

Over the same period, the entire US human population has consumed less than 8 million pounds per year, meaning that livestock farms now suck in around 80 percent of the antibiotics consumed in the United States. Meanwhile, the industry routinely churns out meat containing an array of antibiotic-resistant pathogens.

As former FDA commissioner David A. Kessler recently put it in a New York Times op-ed, “rather than healing sick animals, these drugs are often fed to animals at low levels to make them grow faster and to suppress diseases that arise because they live in dangerously close quarters on top of one another’s waste.” And feeding antibiotics to livestock at low levels may “do the most harm,” Kessler continued, because it provides a perfect incubation ground for the generation of antibiotic-resistant microbes.

The meat industry’s retort to all of this is, essentially: And the problem is? The websites of the major industry trade groups—the American Meat Institute, the National Chicken Council, the National Pork Producers Council—all insist current antibiotic practices are “safe.” The main reason they can claim this with a straight face is that while scientists have long suspected that drug-resistant pathogens can jump from antibiotic-treated animals to humans, it’s been notoriously difficult to prove. The obstacle is ethics: You wouldn’t want to extract, say, antibiotic-resistant salmonella from a turkey and inject it into a person just to see what happens. The risk of what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention politely calls “treatment failure,” i.e., death, would be too great.

But this decades-old industry fig leaf is fraying fast. The latest: a gene-sequencing study from Denmark that documents two cases of the movement of MRSA, an often-deadly, antibiotic-resistant staph infection, from farm animals to people. The excellent “scary disease” reporter Maryn McKenna recently broke down the science in lucid detail:

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Yes, Antibiotic-Resistant Bugs Can Jump from Animals to Humans

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Why "Asshole" Is High Praise and Other Anatomy Lessons With Mary Roach

by hrzy86j5 Posted on April 2, 2013

Mother Jones

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Let Mary Roach be your guide through all things digestive. The author of winsome expositions on astronauts (Packing for Mars), cadavers (Stiff), and sex (Bonk) takes on the alimentary canal in her new book (out yesterday). Whether Roach is drooling into a pipette or has her head up her own ass (literally, watching her own colonoscopy), her enthusiasm is downright infectious. Naturally, I asked her to talk about Gulp while forming some grilled-cheese boluses—bolus being the technical term for a chewed up ball of food just before it’s swallowed.

In an otherwise lovely Oakland bar, we discussed rectal smuggling, the ins and outs of making fake poop, and why calling someone an “asshole” is such a great compliment.

Mother Jones: What made you decide to write a book about the digestive system?

Mary Roach: I was talking to a physician reader, and he got to telling me about the anus, which is this amazing thing that nobody appreciates. Here’s this ring of muscle with nerves that has to discriminate between solid, liquid, and gas, and let it out accordingly. He’s like, “No engineer could design something as multifunctional and fine-tuned as an anus. To call someone an asshole is really bragging him up.” That was the moment I thought, “Oh yeah, this could be an interesting book.”

MJ: In the book, you go to prisons and talk about prisoners smuggling things in their rectums—up to three smartphones at a time! How did you find a guy willing to talk so openly about his rectum?

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Why "Asshole" Is High Praise and Other Anatomy Lessons With Mary Roach

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Why Won’t Exxon Come Clean on the Tar Sands Spill Details?

by 2343b4u4u Posted on April 1, 2013

Mother Jones

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An ExxonMobil pipeline broke on Friday evening, dumping thousands of gallons of tar sands oil in Mayflower, Arkansas. The Pegasus pipeline starts in Illinois and carries 95,000-barrels of oil per day from Alberta’s tar sands to refineries in Texas.

At least 22 homes had to be evacuated after the spill, and local residents have posted some alarming photos and video of the mess in their streets and backyards. The group HAWK Center (Helping Arkansas Wild Kritters) is also posting photos of oiled birds that have been rescued and brought in.

Exxon was cagey, at first, about giving an estimate of how much spilled, initially telling reporters it was “a few thousand” barrels or declining to give an estimate. In an interview with Inside Climate, a local official gave an estimate of 2,000 barrels (or 84,000 gallons). When I asked for a specific figure on the number of barrels spilled, this is what I got from Charlie Engelmann, a media relations adviser for Exxon Mobil Corporation:

A few thousand barrels of oil were observed in the area; a response for 10,000 barrels has been undertaken to ensure adequate resources are in place. Approximately 12,000 barrels of oil and water have been recovered. Crews are steam cleaning oil from property.

That’s still not a very specific answer. This actual figure is something that people will want to know, given that the spill is igniting even more debate about pipeline safety in general and the proposed Keystone XL pipeline in particular.

Meanwhile, an eagle-eyed tipster points out to Mother Jones that the company that provided the fuzzy map of where the oil spilled posted on the response site is the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health, or CTEH, a contractor that has been criticized in the past for using bad data and a “long pattern of tainted results” in its environmental analysis. Based in Little Rock, the company also contracted with BP to test workers during the Gulf spill, prompting others in the field to complain that the company’s results were often skewed to favor whatever company had hired them. “They’re paid to say everything’s OK,” a toxicologist told Greenwire at the time. Here’s CTEH’s less-than-helpful map of the spill:

Engelmann told Mother Jones via email that CTEH is “conducting continuous air quality monitoring” at the spill site. “The air quality does not likely present a human health risk, with the exception of the high pooling areas, where cleanup crews are working with safety equipment,” he added.

When called, the phone number listed for the Mayflower Incident Unified Command Joint Information Center on the town’s website on Monday morning, the call went straight to Exxon’s corporate headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, where an Exxon press flack answered the phone.

This is a bit of a flashback to the 2010 Gulf spill—we’d call the joint information press line, and it would often be a BP employee on the line. I also asked Engelmann if it was all Exxon staff at the information office, to which he responded, “We are working with a number of entities, including the EPA, Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, Arkansas Department of Health, Faulkner County and ExxonMobil Pipeline Company, among others, on response efforts.”

Of course company staff can answer some of my questions, but it’s hard to know if you’re getting reliable information when the responsible party is the one fielding the press calls.

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Why Won’t Exxon Come Clean on the Tar Sands Spill Details?

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Mother Jones Nominated for 4 National Magazine Awards

by Aaron Duff Posted on April 1, 2013

Mother Jones

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Today, the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) announced the nominees for the 2013 National Magazine Awards. We are thrilled to announce that Mother Jones has been nominated in four categories: general excellence, print; multimedia; video (for the 47 percent video); and feature writing, for Mac McClelland’s “I Was A Warehouse Wage Slave” (a.k.a. “Shelf Lives”). These awards, which honor work published in 2012, are considered the Academy Awards of the industry. On May 2, editors will gather in New York City to find out the winners.

The nominees were also notable for the number of women nominated for the writing and reporting categories. For the first time, women achieved parity in the number of such nominations. Hell, it’s the first time they’ve come close. (Clara has more on that here.)

The official release from ASME is below. You can monitor chatter about the nominations on twitter by following @ASME1963 and the hashtag #ellies.

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NEW YORK, NY (April 1, 2013)—The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) today announced the finalists for the 2013 National Magazine Awards. Known as the Ellies–for the Alexander Calder stabile “Elephant” given to each award winner–the National Magazine Awards will be presented on Thursday, May 2, at the New York Marriott Marquis.

The May 2 gala will also include the presentation of the Creative Excellence Award to Milton Glaser and Walter Bernard, whose work as graphic designers has shaped the modern magazine. The Creative Excellence Award was established in 2008 by ASME to recognize writers and artists who have made unique and enduring contributions to magazines.

Sixty-two publications were nominated this year in 23 categories. Twenty-six magazines received multiple nominations, led by National Geographic with seven, followed by Bon Appétit and New York, both with six. GQ and The New Yorker both received five nominations; Esquire, Harper’s Magazine, Mother Jones and Texas Monthly all received four.

Magazines with multiple nominations also include The Atlantic (3), Saveur (3), TIME (3), Wired (3), Bloomberg Businessweek (2), Byliner (2), Golf Digest (2) Los Angeles (2), Martha Stewart Living (2), The New York Times Magazine (2), Outside (2), The Paris Review (2), Real Simple (2), Scientific American (2),Slate (2), Sports Illustrated (2) and W (2).

Six publications are first-time finalists: Afar for Website; Bullett for Design; Byliner for Feature Writing and Fiction; HGTV Magazine for Magazine Section; mental_floss for General Excellence, Print; and Pitchfork for General Excellence, Digital Media.

Finalists in the Magazine of the Year category, honoring excellence both in print and on digital platforms, will be announced on Monday, April 8.
Established in 1966, the National Magazine Awards are sponsored by ASME in association with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Nearly 260 publications entered the National Magazine Awards this year, submitting 1,636 entries. The judges included 330 magazine editors, art directors and photography editors as well as journalism educators.

NATIONAL MAGAZINE AWARDS 2013 FINALISTS:

GENERAL EXCELLENCE, PRINT
News, Sports, and Entertainment Magazines
(Honors large-circulation weeklies, biweeklies and monthlies)
Esquire; Fortune; National Geographic; New York; Wired

Service and Fashion Magazines
(Honors women’s magazines, including health, fitness and family-centric publications)
Harper’s Bazaar; O, The Oprah Magazine; Real Simple; Vogue; Women’s Health

Women’s Health Lifestyle Magazines
(Honors food, travel and shelter magazines as well as city and regional publications)
Bon Appétit; House Beautiful; Martha Stewart Living; Saveur; Texas Monthly

Special-Interest Magazines
(Honors magazines serving targeted audiences, including enthusiast and hobbyist titles)
The Fader; mental_floss; MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History; Outside; Scientific American

Literary, Political and Professional Magazines
(Honors small-circulation general-interest magazines as well as academic and scholarly publications)
MIT Technology Review; Mother Jones; The New Republic; The Paris Review; Poetry

GENERAL EXCELLENCE, DIGITAL MEDIA
Chow; Glamour; National Geographic; Pitchfork; Slate

DESIGN
Bon Appétit; Bullett; Details; New York; TIME

PHOTOGRAPHY
Bon Appétit; Interview; National Geographic; TIME; W

FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY

Harper’s Magazine for “The Water of My Land,” photographs by Samuel James; September

Martha Stewart Living for “A Pilgrim’s Feast,” photographs by Anna Williams; November

National Geographic for “In the Shadow of Wounded Knee,” by Alexandra Fuller; photographs by Aaron Huey; August

New York for “What We Saw When The Lights Went Out,” by John Homans; photographs by Iwan Baan, Pari Dukovic, Christopher Griffith, Casey Kelbaugh, Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao, Joseph Michael Lopez, Gus Powell, Joseph Rodriguez and Peter Yang; November 12

W for “Good Kate, Bad Kate,” by Will Self; photographs by Steven Klein; March

SINGLE-TOPIC ISSUE

Backpacker for “The Survival Issue,” October

Bloomberg Businessweek for “Election Issue,” October 15-21

Fast Company for “The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies,” March

Saveur for “The Mexico Issue,” August/September

Sports Illustrated for “Olympic Preview,” July 23

MAGAZINE SECTION

Bon Appétit for “Starters”

Esquire for “Man at His Best”

GQ for “The Punch List”

HGTV Magazine for “Help Wanted”

New York for “Strategist”

PERSONAL SERVICE

Esquire for “Fatherhood for Men,” June/July

GQ for “Marriage: The Most Important, Least Discussed Institution You’ll Ever Be a Part Of,” May

Los Angeles for “The New Face and Body of Plastic Surgery,” October

Outside for “Take Two Hours of Pike Forest and Call Me in the Morning,” by Florence Williams; December

Real Simple for “Women and Time: Setting a New Agenda,” April

LEISURE INTERESTS

Bon Appétit for “The Incredible Egg,” by Carla Lalli Music, April

ESPN The Magazine for “Fantasy Football,” August 6

Golf Digest for “Masters Preview,” April

Los Angeles for “The Food Lover’s Guide to L.A.,” edited by Lesley Bargar Suter; November

Wired for “How to Be a Geek Dad,” June

WEBSITE
Afar; The Atlantic; Golf Digest; National Geographic; Scientific American

TABLET MAGAZINE
Bloomberg Businessweek; Bon Appétit; Esquire; Money; National Geographic

MULTIMEDIA

Field & Stream for “The Best Days of the Rut 2012,” November Print Issue, and “The F&S Rut Reporters” at fieldandstream.com and for iPhone
Mother Jones for “MoJo Labs: Data Journalism and Graphics“

National Geographic for “Cheetahs on the Edge,” November iPad Edition

The New Yorker for “Secrets of Edgewood”

TIME for Hurricane Sandy Coverage

VIDEO

The Daily Beast for “How Obama Learned to Kill,” June 6, and “The Keys to the Economy,” October 25, from the Op-Vid Series
Mother Jones for “Full Secret Video of Private Romney Fundraiser,” September 18
The Oxford American for “Tiny Town!,” June 8, and “I’ll Paint Something Worthwhile,” August 15, from the SoLost Video Series

Saveur for “How to Make Salsa Verde with Avocado,” August 15, “Martin Yan Makes Scallion Pancakes,” October 10, and “How to Make the Perfect Tempura,” December 4, from the Master Class Video Series

Sports Illustrated for “Welcome to Friendship Beach,” August 21, and “Loud and Clear,” September 25, from the Underdogs Video Series

PUBLIC INTEREST

The Atlantic for “The Writing Revolution,” by Peg Tyre; October

Consumer Reports for “Arsenic in Your Juice,” January, and “Arsenic in Your Food,” November, by Andrea Rock

The New Yorker for “The Throwaways,” by Sarah Stillman; September 3

Rolling Stone for “School of Hate,” by Sabrina Rubin Erdely; February 16

Texas Monthly for “Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives,” by Mimi Swartz; August

REPORTING

Chicago for “Lawbreakers, Lawmakers,” by David Bernstein and Noah Isackson; January

GQ for “18 Tigers, 17 Lions, 8 Bears, 3 Cougars, 2 Wolves, 1 Baboon, 1 Macaque and 1 Man Dead in Ohio,” by Chris Heath; March

Harper’s Magazine for “All Politics Is Local: Election Night in Peru’s Largest Prison,” by Daniel Alarcón; February
The New York Times Magazine for “Did You Think About the Six People You Executed?” by Robert F. Worth; May 13

The New Yorker for “The Implosion,” February 27, and “The War Within,” August 27, by Jon Lee Anderson

Texas Monthly for “Hannah and Andrew,” by Pamela Colloff; January
The Texas Observer for “Valley of Death,” by Melissa del Bosque; March

FEATURE WRITING (INCORPORATING PROFILE WRITING)

Byliner for “The Living and the Dead,” by Brian Mockenhaupt; October

GQ for “The Blind Faith of the One-Eyed Matador,” by Karen Russell; October

GQ for “Burning Man,” by Jay Kirk; February
Mother Jones for “Shelf Lives,” by Mac McClelland; March/April

The New Yorker for “Atonement,” by Dexter Filkins; October 29 & November 5

Texas Monthly for “The Innocent Man: Part I,” November, and “The Innocent Man: Part II,” December, by Pamela Colloff

Wired for “Inside the Mansion—and the Mind—of Kim Dotcom, the Most Wanted Man on the Internet,” by Charles Graeber; November

ESSAYS AND CRITICISM

The Atlantic for “Fear of a Black President,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates; September

Foreign Policy for “Why Do They Hate Us?” by Mona Eltahawy; May/June

New York for “A Life Worth Ending,” by Michael Wolff; May 28

The New Yorker for “Over the Wall,” by Roger Angell; November 19

Orion for “State of the Species,” by Charles C. Mann; November/December

COLUMNS AND COMMENTARY

Elle for three columns by Daphne Merkin: “Portrait of a Lady,” March; “Social Animal,” May; and “We’re All Helmut Newton Now,” October

The Nation for three columns by Katha Pollitt: “Protect Pregnant Women: Free Bei Bei Shuai,” March 26; “Ann Romney, Working Woman?” May 7; and “Blasphemy Is Good for You,” October 15

New York for three columns by Frank Rich: “Who in God’s Name Is Mitt Romney?” February 6; “Mayberry R.I.P.,” July 30; and “Nora’s Secret,” August 27-September 3
The New York Times Magazine for three columns by Adam Davidson: “It Ain’t Just Pickles,” February 19; “The $200,000-Nanny Club,” March 25; and “Caymans, Here We Come,” July 29

Slate for three columns by Dahlia Lithwick: “It’s Not About the Law, Stupid,” March 22; “The Supreme Court’s Dark Vision of Freedom,” March 27; and “Where Is the Liberal Outrage?” July 6

FICTION

Byliner for “The Boy Vanishes,” by Jennifer Haigh; July

Harper’s Magazine for “Batman and Robin Have an Altercation,” by Stephen King; September

Harper’s Magazine for “Train,” by Alice Munro; April

McSweeney’s Quarterly for “River Camp,” by Thomas McGuane; September
The Paris Review for “Housebreaking,” by Sarah Frisch; December

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Mother Jones Nominated for 4 National Magazine Awards

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