Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


From Vinnie Penn, Glenn Beck’s partner in the late 90s, when both were Top 40 jocks at KC101 in New Haven, Connecticut:

He always knew how to work people and situations for attention. He could pick the most pointless story in the news that day and find a way to approach it to get phones lit up. That was his strong point — pissing people off. He was very shrewd on both the business and entertainment sides of radio. He’s built his empire on very calculated button pushing.

This is from part 3 of Alexander Zaitchik’s terrific profile of Beck at Salon.  If you’re looking for an antidote to the Beck dreck that Time magazine recently passed off as journalism, this is it. Read part one here and part two here.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate