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Longreads Member Drive Update: 400 New Members in Our First Day, plus Digg Buys the First Group Membership

Yesterday, we asked for your help, and you responded. Thanks to you, we welcomed 400 new Longreads Members.

We’re now at 1,400 members—that’s great progress, but we’re still less than halfway to our goal of 5,000 Longreads Members. We need your help to keep spreading the word.

You can share your support on Twitter here.

We’re also excited to announce that the team at Digg has purchased a group membership for its staff! We’d like to thank them for their support.

If your company would like to buy a Longreads Membership for its employees, simply use our PayPal donation page to purchase them ($30/year for each employee), then email us with the names of your employees: hello@longreads.com.

We’ll keep updating you on our progress, and thank you again for everything.

We’ve also had a few questions come up about our plans, so I thought I’d answer them here:

Why 5,000 Members?

It’s not only the number we need to actively sustain and improve our service, but it’s also a number that, for us, would cover more than 50% of all operating expenses. The rest of our revenue will come from advertising—through sponsorships and tasteful display advertising and affiliate revenue.

Do you pay publishers and writers?

This is another reason why the Longreads Membership is important—it will pay not just us, but we set aside a portion of those member dues to pay writers and publishers for each “Longreads Member Pick” that we publish. These are stories and book chapters that are not otherwise available for free on the web.

The more members we have, the more Member Picks we can afford to bring to you.

Join Longreads now and help us keep going.

Announcing the Longreads Member Drive: Help Us Reach 5,000 Members

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My name is Mark Armstrong, and four and a half years ago, I created Longreads.

What started as an afternoon project has now grown into something much bigger—a global community of readers, sharing what they love, across both nonfiction and fiction. Along the way we’ve built Longreads into a trusted service that recommends the best stories on the web, and tracks down stories never before published online.

Our service is self-funded, built by four people (and many contributors) who have worked nights and weekends to create something we believe in.

Now we need your help to keep this service running. We want to make good on our vision to build Longreads into a truly global hub for readers, writers and publishers.

Today, we’re announcing the Longreads Member Drive: A new way for you to support this service and give the entire #Longreads community a stake in our future.

You can sign up for as little as $3 a month or $30 a year or make a donation via PayPal.

Our goal is to reach 5,000 Longreads Members—right now we’re at just over 1,000 paid members, so if you are thinking about joining, now is the time to show your support.

We can get to our financial goal faster if you contribute more, and Top Contributors to Longreads will also get special recognition for their support.

Here’s what your Longreads Membership pays for:

  • Our site, plus weekly emails, and RSS & Twitter feeds that link directly to the original publishers’ work.
  • Open access to Longreads from your favorite reading apps.
  • Editors who recommend only the stories they truly love, from hundreds of publishers and writers across the web.
  • Rights to exclusive stories from publishers and writers.
  • Future expansion of our service—more details coming soon.

Our business model relies on both memberships and advertising, but the bulk of our support needs to come from you, the community.

Your support is critical for our survival.

It would be an honor for us to continue to keep this service running and keep building. Join us.

Mark Armstrong

Founder, Longreads

Join Longreads now and help us keep going.

Photo by Dorothy Brown; Special thanks to Walden Pond Books in Oakland.

Reading List: Misunderstood

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Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker.

Feeling misunderstood has been the bane of teen angst for millennia, fodder for pop-punk anthems, and the basis of existential crises. Here, four people delve into the facets of their lives that don’t jibe with the expectations of others—some with disturbing consequences.

1. “I Was A Suspected School Shooter.” (Gina Tron, Vice, January 2013)

In a a small town post-Columbine, Tron’s nonconformity makes her a target. She begins to embody what she is suspected to be.

2. “Why I Stay Closeted in Asia.” (Connor Ke Muo, Buzzfeed, October 2013)

Traveling home for the first time in years, Muo grapples with his parents’ extreme homophobia, cultural stigma, and his father’s reluctance to embrace him — literally.

3. “Hot Girl #2.” (Melissa Stetten, Aeon Magazine, October 2013)

“I like it when people ask if I’m a model, but I hate it when they ask: ‘What do you do?’ and I have to say: ‘I’m a model.’ That makes sense, right?”

4. “Daniel Radcliffe’s Next Trick is to Make Harry Potter Disappear.” (Susan Dominus, October 2013, New York Times)

Radcliffe claims one of the most iconic roles in recent film history, but being Harry Potter isn’t without its cost. Here, the reporter delves into Radcliffe’s upcoming roles (Allen Ginsberg!), his struggle with alcohol and his nuanced relationships with family, friends and fans.

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Photo via Vice

A Longreads Guest Pick: Drew Grossman on 'Game of Tribes'

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Drew Grossman is a writer living in Washington, D.C. His work has appeared on MensHealth.com, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Miami Herald, and his hometown paper, The Tallahassee Democrat.

My Longreads pick this week is Diane Roberts’s ‘Game of Tribes’ for The Oxford American. The piece is an excerpt from a longer project, a book on the culture of college football and how it contributes to and reflects the extraordinary polarization of American life. Roberts—a native of Tallahassee, Fla. and professor in the English department at Florida State University—writes a beautiful and honest essay about the contradictory, but overwhelming love of college football in the American South. We know it’s not perfect, but we can’t help ourselves. Game of Tribes is part history, part ode, and part fight song. In preparation for week 7 of college football season, read Roberts’s Game of Tribes.

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Transport: On Leaving New York for Rehab in Minnesota

Emily Carter Roiphe | Seal Press | 2013 | 10 minutes (2,409 words)

 

Below is an excerpt from Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York, a collection of essays edited by Sari Botton. We’d like to thank Seal Press for sharing it with the Longreads community. Read more…

Reading List: Stories From the Working Class

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Emily Perper is a word-writing human for hire. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker.

I read a brilliant piece, “Zen and the Art of Cover Letter Writing,” that reminded me that I had not yet featured the stories of those suffering under the yoke of this abusive economy.

These are stories about injustice, about broken promises, about frustration and desperation and of course, debt. This is a list for anyone caught in a gross transition period, in a dead-end job, who is trying to make something, anything work out long-term. This is a list for anyone who has been told to “just find a job” or “you can do anything you set your mind to” or “your generation is so lazy/narcissistic/vapid.” This is a list for anyone who has been late on their rent, or hassled by credit card companies, or received overdue loan warnings. You’re not alone.

1. “Young, Multi-Employed, and Looking for Full-Time Work in San Francisco.” (Lucy Schiller, The Billfold, May 2013)

The Billfold is my go-to site for voyeurism, empathy, financial advice, and great storytelling. Schiller and her friends attempt to “ford the murky river of the hiring process” of self-employment, multiple part-time jobs and internships—anything but traditional full-time work.

2. “Retail Workers Need Rights, Too.” (S.E. Smith, This Ain’t Livin’, Febraury 2013)

Retail workers work long hours for practically minimum wage, with hidden physical and emotional abuses, few benefits, and intolerant leave policies.

3. “How She Lives on Minimum Wage: One McDonald’s Worker’s Budget.” (Laura Shin, Forbes, July 2013)

A single mother of four shares the harrowing experience of living on her part-time job’s minimum wage.

4. “‘We’ve Got Ph.D.s Working as File Clerks.” (Will Owen, The Washington Blade, June 2013)

The recently founded Association of Transgender Professionals (ATP) works to further transgender equality in the workplace in the U.S. and abroad. ATP helps trans* individuals prepare for interviews, apply for jobs, and find employment; it also assists companies in recruiting LGBTQ folks.

5. “The Burdens of Working-Class Youth.” (Jennifer M. Silva, The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 2013)

Silva spoke to over a hundred working-class citizens in Lowell, Mass. and Richmond, Va. She found that education for working-class teens is no path to success; rather, these students have no one to advocate for them or explain the labyrinthine bureaucracy of higher education and financial planning, which ends in a dead-end of debt and frustration.

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Photo by Cydneycap

A Longreads Guest Pick: Tim Cigelske on Clive Thompson's "Is Google Wrecking Our Memory?"

Tim is Director of Social Media at Marquette University and writes about beer and running for DRAFT Magazine.

“Whenever I hear people talking about how technology is ruining our attention spans and turning our collective brains to mush, I like to tell them about #longreads. This article is a perfect example. I saw a link on Twitter to an excerpt of Clive Thompson’s book Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better. I immediately saved it to Pocket to read later. In this chapter, Thompson provides background on how we’ve always used outside resources to boost our ‘transactive memory,’ or ability to recall specific facts. The most powerful aid, it turns out, is pooling our brain power with other people. Today, technology is simply multiplying that ability. Now go share with someone else.”

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Photo: Simon McConico

Longreads Member Pick: 'A Semester with Allen Ginsberg,' by Elissa Schappell

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This week we’re excited to feature Elissa Schappell‘s essay, “The Craft of Poetry: A Semester with Allen Ginsberg,” as our Longreads Member Pick. Her recollections are an intimate window into the Beat legend. The piece originally appeared in the Summer 1995 issue of the Paris Review and was later anthologized in their 1999 collection Beat Writers at Work. Thanks to Schappell and the Paris Review for sharing it with the Longreads community:

Of all the literature classes I have ever taken in my life Allen Ginsberg’s “Craft of Poetry” was not only the most memorable and inspiring, but the most useful to me as a writer.
First thought, best thought.
It’s 1994 and I am getting my MFA in fiction at NYU. I’m sitting in the front row of a dingy classroom with a tape recorder and a notebook. The tape recorder is to record Allen Ginsberg, the big daddy of the Beat’s “Craft of Poetry” lectures for a feature I’m writing for The Paris Review. No. Lectures is the wrong word—Ginsberg’s thought operas, his spontaneous jet streams of brilliance, his earthy Dharma Lion roars—that’s what I’m there to capture. His teaching method is, as he explains it, “to improvise to some extent and it have it real rather than just a rote thing.”
It was very real.
The education Ginsberg provided me exceeds the bounds of the classroom, and far beyond the craft of poetry. Look inward and let go, he said. Pay attention to your world, read everything. For as he put it, “If the mind is shapely the art will be shapely.”

—Elissa Schappell, 2013

Read an excerpt here. 

Become a Longreads Member to receive the full ebook.

Photo via MCDarchives

College Longreads Pick: 'One Year Later: Christian Aguilar Remembered as Bravo Case Continues' by Chris Alcantara, University of Florida

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Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick:

The “tick-tock” story is a favorite format among journalists and readers alike. The tick-tock reconstructs a particular event, drawing on a variety of sources to give the reader behind-the-scenes look at a familiar story. Tick-tocks can have the feel of a good pulp novel, as characters emerge and tension builds. One year after a University of Florida student’s murder and another young man’s arrest, The Alligator’s Chris Alcantara attempts to piece together what happened between Christian Aguilar and Pedro Bravo last September, and what happened to their families in the meantime. Though the writing comes off at times as too staccato, the reporting reveals emotional details about the crime and its ripple effects.

One Year Later: Christian Aguilar Remembered as Bravo Case Continues

Chris Alcantara | University of Florida | 10 minutes (2,505 words)

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Professors and students: Share your favorite stories by tagging them with #college #longreads on Twitter, or email links to aileen@longreads.com.

The Time Jason Zengerle and a Gorilla Stalked Michael Moore for Might Magazine

Photo by Jimmy Hahn

Jason Zengerle | Might magazine | 1997 | 19 minutes (4,685 words)

 

Introduction

Thanks to our Longreads Members’ support, we tracked down a vintage story from Dave Eggers’s Might Magazine. It’s from Jason Zengerle, a correspondent for GQ and contributing editor for New York magazine who’s been featured on Longreads often in the past. Read more…