Some writers work for decades before one of their pieces gets widespread attention. Ron Rosenbaum managed to pull it off with his second long-form magazine article. Rosenbaum’s 1971 Esquire piece, “Secrets of the Little Blue Box,” tells the story of an underground network of tele … | Continue reading
Just in time for the weekend, here’s a little list of some of the things I’ve been listening to and reading this week, some of it online — Storyboard included, natch — and some of it on vinyl or actual ink and paper. Two of my biggest loves are narrative journalism and music, and … | Continue reading
“Life in Obamacare’s Dead Zone,” Inara Verzemnieks’ story about the health insurance coverage gap, came out in the New York Times Magazine a month after the presidential election, as the media buzzed about inaccurate predictions, liberal bubbles and the mainstream media’s failure … | Continue reading
Why is it great? This is exciting — a guest submission from Pulitzer Prize winner Maria Henson, whose series of editorials on battered women in Kentucky was awarded the prize for Editorial Writing in 1992. (See her piece for Nieman Reports on the origins of the series here.) Of t … | Continue reading
The American Society of Magazine Editors held its annual Ellies awards gala today, and it was a big night for Mother Jones and The New York Times Magazine. Here’s a handy list of some of the winners: Magazine of the Year: Mother Jones. Reporting: Mother Jones for Shane Bauer’s “M … | Continue reading
One of the first works I read by Ted Conover, the country’s reigning master of immersion reporting, was “Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing,” his 2000 book chronicling 10 months he spent guarding a maximum-security prison. That’s probably why I had imagined him as steely and reserved. I … | Continue reading
Just in time for the weekend, here’s a little list of some of the things I’ve been listening to and reading this week, some of it online — Storyboard included, natch — and some of it on vinyl or actual ink and paper. Two of my biggest loves are narrative journalism and music, and … | Continue reading
It all started with a dusty photo album and a torn children’s map of the world. After countless hours spent sitting cross-legged on the cold concrete floor of our unfinished basement, my 10-year-old self fell in love with the concept of travel. I would gently turn the yellowing p … | Continue reading
The focus of this week’s “The Future of News: Journalism in a Post-Truth Era” at Harvard was, understandably, the (pretty terrifying) landscape for journalists dealing with the new Trump administration and its fondness for “alternative facts.” A lot of journalism heavy hitters, i … | Continue reading
Why is it great? This essay has a more famous line, which is being quoted a lot these days: “Then is when we join … | Continue reading
So much of tech journalism today is antiseptic or fawning, with beat reporters chasing the latest product release or “exclusive” CEO interview. Adrian Chen, on the other hand, is a master at revealing the human side of technology, and often its sinister side. Before leaving to fr … | Continue reading
Just in time for the weekend, here’s a little list of some of the things I’ve been listening to and reading this week, some of it online — Storyboard included, natch — and some of it on vinyl or actual ink and paper. Two of my biggest loves are narrative journalism and music, and … | Continue reading
When I sat down to write this, I was a millennial about to tackle one of many adulthood markers – college graduation – and I struggled with the feeling of bouncing back and forth from being an adult one second and a child the next. Legally, I was an adult and had been since I […] | Continue reading
Why is it great? Even without context, this line is tremendous. Playfully riffing off Chekhov’s rule that if you introduce a gun in the first act, it absolutely must go off by the third, Solomon transforms a prosaic garden implement into something ominous, sinister. But with cont … | Continue reading
Chris Hamby’s recent investigative series for BuzzFeed reads like dystopian fiction. He tells us of a powerful “global super court” that companies use to sue sovereign nations for cutting into their profits. Proceedings are usually secret, public oversight is virtually nonexisten … | Continue reading