Independent Magazines and the Power of Connection

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And then Molly Ivins came to town.

In the spring of 1992 Molly, who was a columnist for us at the time, came to San Francisco to be part of a fundraiser for the Mother Jones Investigative Fund. Molly's book was on the New York Times bestseller list, and she was a big star for a little magazine that had seen some hard recent times. So we were grateful -- enormously, fawningly grateful -- to her just for agreeing to show up.

But she didn't just show up.

Mother Jones' editor Doug Foster had asked if she would come by the office before the event to spend some time with the staff, and Molly being Molly, so she did. We passed a sizeable piece of the afternoon crammed into our windowless conference room, listening to her tell stories -- from her days at the Texas Observer, from her stint at the New York Times, from her encounters with the Texas Lege -- and through her stories and her generous spirit flowed an elixir more potent, more rejuvenating to the staff, than any drug ever imagined by Big Pharma. She plugged all of us back into the juice of great American independent journalism, reminding us that this work we were doing -- kick-ass, truth-telling, nail-the-bastards, damn-the-consequences reporting -- put us on the side of the Freedom Fighters, the Muckrakers, the heroes and heroines in towns red and blue across the country who stand up for justice. Of course, she was also fall-on-the-floor funny, profane, optimistic and confident. We walked out of there with our feet a mile off the floor, and I had received a lesson that can't be found in marketing text books about the power that lives in a righteous cause.

My point, if it's not obvious already, is simply that independent magazines -- the winners we're celebrating today from Raw Vision to High Country News, from Genewatch to New Mobility, to all of the nominees and beyond -- connect their people into communities that can be and often are fundamental to their sense of who they are -- who we are -- and where our lives get their meaning. There is nothing more potent or personal. Try saying that about Entertainment Weekly.

Let me tell one more story as a means of bridging to today's media environment -- a lot has changed in the 18 years these awards have been given out.

A few years back, near the height of the first dotcom boom, I was invited to attend a small breakfast in Silicon Valley with ABC News anchor Peter Jennings and about 20 high-tech execs and media folk. Jennings was charming, quick-witted and at the same time amusingly quaint. He claimed he felt more at home in Pakistan where he'd been an overseas correspondent than he did in Silicon Valley. His opening remarks said, in effect, "I am a stranger in your land. I come in peace. Tell me of your customs."

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