Incite's Investigative Journalism Oral History Lands in Mother Jones 50th Anniversary Retrospective - Incite at Columbia University

This year Mother Jones, the nonprofit investigative news outlet which was founded as a magazine, published its 50th anniversary edition. As part of its coverage, the magazine featured the work of Adiel Kaplan, a journalist and professor at Columbia University’s Journalism School who is collaborating with Incite Institute on a developing project to document the complex and irreplaceable history of investigative journalism. 

Two interviews from Kaplan’s Global Investigative Journalism Oral History (GIJOH) project were included in “Exploding Cars, Office Monkeys, Watergate: The Origins of Mother Jones,” a retrospective article by Monika Bauerlein, CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), which produces Mother Jones. Bauerlein’s story details the Mother Jones newsroom’s rich history of holding powerful political actors and movements accountable through investigative reporting. 

Kaplan is credited as one of two providers of additional research for Bauerlein’s ‘MoJo at 50’ deep dive. 

“It's exciting that some of the pilot interviews we did for this project are already being used to chronicle the early years of an American investigative reporting institution,” said Kaplan. “The timing lining up with Mother Jones's 50th anniversary felt like proof of concept for how this material can add to and enliven the historical record.”

Bauerlein and Kaplan spoke during early development of GIJOH, with Bauerlein providing suggestions of founder figures to interview about the Center for Investigative Reporting and Mother Jones, two of the U.S.’ oldest nonprofit newsrooms, which merged in 2024. When it came time for Bauerlein to write her organization’s 50th anniversary article, she reached out to see if those interviews could be used as primary sources. 

With the approval of narrators to share their interviews before the project archive’s larger release, Bauerlein incorporated stories and quotes from Adam Hochschild, a co-founder of Mother Jones, and Mark Dowie, initially the magazine’s business manager who quickly became a star investigative reporter at Mother Jones. 

“It's a pattern we’ve seen around the world: a handful of determined young journalists seeking more accountability for the powerful find each other and start inventing new ways to do the work,” said Kaplan. “Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting started around the same time in the same place, worked hand-in-hand on some of the stories that made both their names, and later merged into one institution that's still going strong 50 years on. It's a pretty remarkable arc.”

The work of building a full project archive will otherwise span several years to construct an oral history archive of the global investigative journalism movement in which nonprofit news outlets like Mother Jones and CIR are significant pillars. 

Incite Institute provided the initial funding for GIJOH. The GIJOH team and the Institute are now seeking support to expand the project into a comprehensive oral history documenting the work of the people, institutions, and funders that helped shape investigative journalism into a force for democratic accountability over the past fifty years.

The vision for the completed project includes interviews with figures central to the investigative journalism movements in their regions, collected by journalist fellows selected and trained in oral history by Incite. 

This structure will ensure that the archive is driven by local interest and accessible in local languages, reflecting the global nature of the history of investigative journalism itself. The project also aims to create an archive uniquely designed to remain secure and resilient in the face of threats facing investigative journalists.

Should it receive funding, GIJOH will be housed at Incite, home to Columbia Oral History, and developed in collaboration with the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia Journalism School. The wide reach of investigative journalism and the accomplishments of the movement are full of lessons in accountability and transparency for those inside and outside the media industry. The archive Kaplan is building is the first of its kind to study how investigative leaders grew the movement globally over the last 50 years. 

During this moment of rapid change in the media landscape, Kaplan and the GIJOH research team believe that documenting the history of investigative journalism builds, sustains, and protects investigative journalism practices through moments of upheaval and opacity. Beyond preserving this history, the archive aims to highlight past lessons to shape the current state of democracy, truth and accountability in the investigative journalism movement.

When Kaplan proposed documenting the history of the global investigative journalism movement through oral history, the choice to incubate the project was an easy decision, said Incite Director of Research Evan McCormick. The GIJOH project naturally aligned with the type of large-scale, network-based interview project that characterizes Incite's research, and the Incite team has expansive goals for the project.

“With more resources, we envision this becoming a foundational historical study that incorporates journalists across the globe in collecting the stories that matter most in their regions, before they are lost,” said McCormick. “The execution of this project, as well as the lessons gleaned from the oral histories it produces, will have a tangible impact on reporters and others fighting for a free press and democracy today.”