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‘Three and a Half Decades of Denying that I’m Transgender’

Inspired by the recent National Trans Day of Visibility, here’s a bracingly candid essay by Jane Demuth published at BuzzFeed: “How Running Helped Me Explain My Transition To Myself.” The piece is a sober meditation on running, literally and figuratively. At a time when she’s first transitioning from male to female, Demuth clocks many miles daily, up and down hills, and wherever her feet will take her:

“Transitioning from male to female, one year and change. Three and a half decades of denying that I’m transgender, 36 years of a constant inner refrain of “I couldn’t” and “I won’t” have finally shifted to acceptance — “I could,” “I will,” and now, “I am.” 100 milligrams spironolactone twice a day to block testosterone; 6 milligrams estrogen, taken sublingually so it doesn’t destroy my liver. Softer skin, bigger ass. Plus one cup size. Maybe two if I suck in my gut and squint. Just numbers. Doesn’t matter. Keep going. Run. Run. Run…”

She’s running to try and calm herself and quiet her mind, to keep at a distance from painful realizations about her tendency to, well, run from intimacy:

“What they don’t tell you prior to transitioning is that once the thing you’ve been hiding behind is no longer there, you still need to deal with everything else; the losses accrued in the shadow of a truth you never thought you could live, and the collateral damage from those losses. It’s like addiction recovery, except that there are no 12-step groups for this.”

Transitioning raises many hard questions for Demuth herself. To what degree is that choice a form of running away? Is she closing doors she won’t be able to re-open later? Will it bring her closer to or further from her ultimate desires: love and family? But she’s troubled most by the questions asked by others, especially questions about the exchanges to her exterior:

“I’m running from what friends have asked me: “When are you going to start presenting as female?” What the hell is that supposed to mean? Am I supposed to start wearing dresses and heels every day to confirm my gender identity to the outside world? Fuck that. I am presenting as female, 24/7. And most of the time I’m doing it in jeans and a T-shirt, like almost every other woman I know. People who don’t know me are already gendering me correctly as female, and, god help me, even chatting me up and hitting on me when I’m sweaty and gross, out on the trail. Asking me when I’m going to start trying to look more female is bullshit.”

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What Columbia University’s Investigation Reveals About the Rolling Stone UVA Rape Story

Columbia University’s School of Journalism has released its report investigating what went wrong with Rolling Stone’s story of a rape at UVA, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely. Among its conclusions:

Rolling Stone’s senior editors are unanimous in the belief that the story’s failure does not require them to change their editorial systems. “It’s not like I think we need to overhaul our process, and I don’t think we need to necessarily institute a lot of new ways of doing things,” Dana said. “We just have to do what we’ve always done and just make sure we don’t make this mistake again.” Coco McPherson, the fact-checking chief, said, “I one hundred percent do not think that the policies that we have in place failed. I think decisions were made around those because of the subject matter.”

Yet better and clearer policies about reporting practices, pseudonyms and attribution might well have prevented the magazine’s errors. The checking department should have been more assertive about questioning editorial decisions that the story’s checker justifiably doubted. Dana said he was not told of reporting holes like the failure to contact the three friends or the decision to use misleading attributions to obscure that fact.

Stronger policy and clearer staff understanding in at least three areas might have changed the final outcome:

Pseudonyms. Dana, Woods and McPherson said using pseudonyms at Rolling Stone is a “case by case” issue that requires no special convening or review. Pseudonyms are inherently undesirable in journalism. They introduce fiction and ask readers to trust that this is the only instance in which a publication is inventing details at its discretion. Their use in this case was a crutch – it allowed the magazine to evade coming to terms with reporting gaps. Rolling Stone should consider banning them. If its editors believe pseudonyms are an indispensable tool for its forms of narrative writing, the magazine should consider using them much more rarely and only after robust discussion about alternatives, with dissent encouraged.

Checking Derogatory Information. Erdely and Woods made the fateful agreement not to check with the three friends. If the fact-checking department had understood that such a practice was unacceptable, the outcome would almost certainly have changed.

Confronting Subjects With Details. When Erdely sought “comment,” she missed the opportunity to hear challenging, detailed rebuttals from Phi Kappa Psi before publication. The fact-checker relied only on Erdely’s communications with the fraternity and did not independently confirm with Phi Kappa Psi the account Rolling Stone intended to publish about Jackie’s assault. If both the reporter and checker had understood that by policy they should routinely share specific, derogatory details with the subjects of their reporting, Rolling Stone might have veered in a different direction.

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Six Years of Longreads

April 17 marks six years since we started this community—growing from just a few readers to over a million, with people now sharing stories in dozens of different languages from hundreds of publishers. Christian Jørgensen put together a really nice Storify timeline of how the Twitter hashtag #longreads first evolved.

This community also has grown from sharing stories to actually funding them. Longreads Members have already helped us finance dozens of stories from outstanding writers and publisher partners. You can see them here. (We’re also celebrating our one-year anniversary being part of the Automattic / WordPress.com family, and we couldn’t be prouder to be at a company dedicated to helping independent publishers succeed.)

Thank you to everyone has helped make this community of readers so special. We’re excited for what’s next, from new originals to live events in San Francisco and New York.

Lessons from Warren Buffett’s Letter to Shareholders

Before I depart the subject of spin-offs, let’s look at a lesson to be learned from a conglomerate mentioned earlier: LTV. I’ll summarize here, but those who enjoy a good financial story should read the piece about Jimmy Ling that ran in the October 1982 issue of D Magazine. Look it up on the Internet.

Through a lot of corporate razzle-dazzle, Ling had taken LTV from sales of only $36 million in 1965 to number 14 on the Fortune 500 list just two years later. Ling, it should be noted, had never displayed any managerial skills. But Charlie told me long ago to never underestimate the man who overestimates himself. And Ling had no peer in that respect.

Ling’s strategy, which he labeled “project redeployment,” was to buy a large company and then partially spin off its various divisions. In LTV’s 1966 annual report, he explained the magic that would follow: “Most importantly, acquisitions must meet the test of the 2 plus 2 equals 5 (or 6) formula.” The press, the public and Wall Street loved this sort of talk.

In 1967 Ling bought Wilson & Co., a huge meatpacker that also had interests in golf equipment and pharmaceuticals. Soon after, he split the parent into three businesses, Wilson & Co. (meatpacking), Wilson Sporting Goods and Wilson Pharmaceuticals, each of which was to be partially spun off. These companies quickly became known on Wall Street as Meatball, Golf Ball and Goof Ball.

Soon thereafter, it became clear that, like Icarus, Ling had flown too close to the sun. By the early 1970s, Ling’s empire was melting, and he himself had been spun off from LTV … that is, fired.

Periodically, financial markets will become divorced from reality—you can count on that. More Jimmy Lings will appear. They will look and sound authoritative. The press will hang on their every word. Bankers will fight for their business. What they are saying will recently have “worked.” Their early followers will be feeling very clever. Our suggestion: Whatever their line, never forget that 2+2 will always equal 4. And when someone tells you how old-fashioned that math is—zip up your wallet, take a vacation and come back in a few years to buy stocks at cheap prices.

-From Warren Buffett’s annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders.

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The Origins of ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin”

Photo by mrbluegenes

TERRY GROSS: So were you writing the song on assignment? Were you writing it for The Righteous Brothers?

BARRY MANN: Yes.

CYNTHIA WEIL: When we wrote the song, they weren’t that crazy about it (laughter).

GROSS: Really?

MANN: Well, when I sang it – I loved The Everly Brothers at the time, and I sounded like The Everly Brothers. So when I sang it to Bill and Bobby, they said, you know, it sounds really good, very good for The Everly Brothers. And another thing that happened is that at the time, you know, the records that they had been putting out, they both sang together, and this one, Bill Medley had the lead. So Bobby said, well, what am I going to do while he sings? And I think Phil Spector says, well, you’ll be walking to the bank.

-Legendary songwriting team Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, in 2000.

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Literary Agent to Authors: Take the Money

Guernica: Is there ever a situation where you’d advise an author not to take a big advance that’s being offered?

Chris Parris-Lamb: No, not really. Which is not the same as saying they should always take the biggest advance that’s being offered. But I’d never advise an author to turn down an advance because it’s big. Statistically, your book is more likely to do well if you receive a big advance. There is more pressure on the publishers to make it work and get their money back if they’ve paid out a large advance. The downside of any advance is always the same—your book might not sell. That’s a risk if you get a small advance, and a risk if you get a big advance, so if there’s a big advance on the table, take it, and use the money to write your next one.

I think there’s this idea that if you receive a big advance and then the book doesn’t work, it’s a disaster, and your career is ruined. That’s just not true. If your first book doesn’t work, it’s always going to be harder to sell the second book, and that’s the case regardless of whether you were paid a big or small advance. If someone wants to make a bet on you, why not take it? If your first one doesn’t work, you might have to take a haircut on the advance for the second, but so what?

Literary agent Chris Parris-Lamb, in a Guernica interview with Jonathan Lee. Parris-Lamb has represented authors including The Art of Fielding author Chad Harbach, and he helped get a nearly $2 million advance for the forthcoming Garth Risk Hallberg novel City on Fire.

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A Doctor with Terminal Cancer Writes to His Baby Daughter

Time for me is double-edged: Every day brings me further from the low of my last cancer relapse, but every day also brings me closer to the next cancer recurrence — and eventually, death. Perhaps later than I think, but certainly sooner than I desire. There are, I imagine, two responses to that realization. The most obvious might be an impulse to frantic activity: to “live life to its fullest,” to travel, to dine, to achieve a host of neglected ambitions. Part of the cruelty of cancer, though, is not only that it limits your time, it also limits your energy, vastly reducing the amount you can squeeze into a day. It is a tired hare who now races. But even if I had the energy, I prefer a more tortoiselike approach. I plod, I ponder, some days I simply persist.

Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described, hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed.

Yet one thing cannot be robbed of her futurity: my daughter, Cady. I hope I’ll live long enough that she has some memory of me. Words have a longevity I do not.

-From a short, beautiful Stanford Medicine essay by neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi, who suffered from terminal lung cancer. Update: Kalanithi died on March 9, 2015. He was 37. “We are all devastated by the tragedy of his sudden illness and untimely demise,” said Gary Steinberg, professor and chair of neurosurgery at the university.

His book, When Breath Becomes Air, was released on January 12, 2016. Here is an excerpt from The New Yorker.

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David Carr: 1956-2015

Photo by internaz

David Carr, the acclaimed journalist, media columnist for The New York Times, and author of the bestselling Night of the Gun, died February 2015 in New York at the age of 58.

Here is a brief reading list of stories by and about Carr, his life and work. It doesn’t even begin to cover it. We will miss him. Read more…

‘Garbage Comments Cheapen My Work’: Journalist Eva Holland on Freelancing and Commenters

Eva Holland

Eva Holland is a journalist based in the Yukon who has written for publications including Pacific Standard and SB Nation. Her latest Longreads Original, “‘It’s Yours’,” explores the life (and maybe death) of an internet commenter community, “the Horde,” that Ta-Nehisi Coates helped foster at The Atlantic. I spoke with her via email about her own relationship with internet comments as a freelance journalist, and whether there’s hope for building sustainable communities that are not inevitably dragged down by vitriol and spam. Read more…

‘If You Think The Internet Is Terrible Now, Just Wait a While’

Photo by CLUC

I have previously shared with you Balk’s Law (“Everything you hate about The Internet is actually everything you hate about people”) and Balk’s Second Law (“The worst thing is knowing what everyone thinks about anything”). Here I will impart to you Balk’s Third Law: “If you think The Internet is terrible now, just wait a while.” The moment you were just in was as good as it got. The stuff you shake your head about now will seem like fucking Shakespeare in 2016. I like to think of myself as an optimist, but I have a hard time seeing a future where anything gets better. Do you know why? Because everything is terrible and only getting worse. We won’t all be dead in twenty years, but we’ll all wish we were. I used to have hopes that once the Internet got completely unbearable some of the smart people would peel off and start something new, but with each passing day it seems ever less likely. (If anyone peels off to start something new it’s going to be teens, and we know what idiots they are.) No, the Internet is going to keep getting worse and there will be no chance for escape. It’s a massive torrent of sewage blasted at you at all hours and you pay handsomely for the privilege of having a hand-held cannon you carry with you at all times to spray more shit-sludge at yourself whenever you’re bored or anxious. Some of you sleep with it right next to your head in case you wake in the middle of the night and need to deliver another turgid shot to your wide-open mouth.

-From a short post by The Awl’s Alex Balk offering advice to young people.

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