SAN FRANCISCO -- The editor of Mother Jones has been fired, just four months after he was hired to run the liberal magazine named for a crusading reformist leader of the early 20th century.
Michael Moore, 31, Thursday said he was let go earlier this week for refusing to run an article critical of Nicaragua's Sandinista government.
The article, Moore said, 'contained a number of untruths about Nicaragua.'
Moore said he has had several other conflicts regarding the content of the struggling magazine with Adam Hochschild, one of Mother Jones' founders and its major investor.
At its peak in the 1970s, Mother Jones had a circulation of 233,000 and won numerous national awards for its exposes, including one on the tendency of Ford Pintos to catch fire after rear-end collisions.
The magazine, which Moore said relied too much on 'Yuppie' articles and not enough on investigative pieces, currently sells about 160,000 copies a month.
Hochschild, the heir to a mining fortune, said he had insisted that the article on Nicaragua run in the magazine but said he did not fire Moore because of that one incident.
'He's a very talented journalist,' Hochschild said of Moore, 'but the chemistry was not right between him and Mother Jones. I would certainly never ask someone to leave a magazine because he had a slightly different point of view on Nicaraugua than I do.'
Hochschild said he would take over as editor temporarily until a replacement for Moore can be found.
