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“Brad And Angie Go To Meet The African Pee Generator Girls.” —Sarah Miller, The Awl
“Brad And Angie Go To Meet The African Pee Generator Girls.” —Sarah Miller, The Awl
“A Mormon Reporter on the Romney Bus.” —McKay Coppins, BuzzFeed
Dozens of reporters have been killed in Mexico over the last 12 years by drug traffickers, and very little has been done to investigate their deaths and bring the murderers to justice:
Let us say that you are a Mexican reporter working for peanuts at a local television station somewhere in the provinces—the state of Durango, for example—and that one day you get a friendly invitation from a powerful drug-trafficking group. Imagine that it is the Zetas, and that thanks to their efforts in your city several dozen people have recently perished in various unspeakable ways, while justice turned a blind eye. Among the dead is one of your colleagues. Now consider the invitation, which is to a press conference to be held punctually on the following Friday, at a not particularly out of the way spot just outside of town. You were, perhaps, considering going instead to a movie? Keep in mind, the invitation notes, that attendance will be taken by the Zetas.
Imagine now that you arrive on the appointed day at the stated location, and that you are greeted by several expensively dressed, highly amiable men. Once the greetings are over, they have something to say, and the tone changes. We would like you, they say, to be considerate of us in your coverage. We have seen or heard certain articles or news reports that are unfair and, dare we say, displeasing to us. Displeasing. We have our eye on you. We would like you to consider the consequences of offending us further. We know you would not look forward to the result. We give warning, but we give no quarter. You are dismissed.
“Mexico: Risking Life for Truth.” — Alma Guillermoprieto, The New York Review of Books
Publishers, writers, readers: You can submit a story to be featured as one of our upcoming Longreads Member Exclusives.
We choose one story per week to send to our paid members, and we pay rights holders to reprint the story.
Submission guidelines are below. You can email your submission, as a PDF or text file, to members@longreads.com
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
• We accept stories or book excerpts over 2,500 words. Priority will be given to stories that have been, or will be, published in a print magazine, online magazine, or as a book/ebook.
• Stories can be nonfiction or fiction, old or new.
• We do not currently accept stories that are already available for free on the web. (Stories behind a paywall, or stories featured in Google Books are acceptable.)
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This week, we’re excited to share a Longreads Exclusive from Orion, a publication that has been featured on Longreads in the past, with pieces from Charles C. Mann, Belle Boggs and Sy Montgomery.
“The Creature Beyond the Mountains,” by Brian Doyle, is a story about the giant sturgeon in the Pacific Northwest—one, named Herman, weighs nearly 500 pounds—and about our relationship with them. Doyle is editor of Portland Magazine and writes frequently for Orion’s print edition and blog. His piece won the John Burroughs Award and was listed as “Notable” by both Best Science and Nature Writing 2012 and Best American Essays 2012. See an excerpt here.
p.s. You can support Longreads—and get more exclusives like this—by becoming a member for just $3 per month.
(Illustration by Kjell Reigstad)
“The Innocent Man, Part Two.” —Pamela Colloff, Texas Monthly
Why the Red Cross hasn’t been as effective as small community groups when it has come to disaster relief post-Sandy:
The real problem with the Red Cross was not that it was stretched thin, but rather that it was simply too big, and its people too inexperienced in disaster recovery, to be able to respond nimbly to Sandy. Eventually, after a week or two, it will lumber in to affected areas and take over from the ad-hoc groups who provided desperately-needed aid in the early days. It’s reasonably good at that. But that’s clearly not good enough, and it’s certainly nowhere near flawless.
Of course, the Red Cross is burdened with massive expectations. If you’re stuck in a remote part of Staten Island without power or communication for days on end, no one’s going to blame Doctors Without Borders or Occupy Wall Street if you get no help — but they are going to blame the Red Cross.
With $117 million in donations comes an expectation that the Red Cross can and should be everywhere it’s needed, when it’s needed, rather than in a handful of places, a week later, offering food but no shelter or blankets or power or lights. But probably those expectations are unrealistic. The US is fortunate in that it’s not a permanent disaster zone: it’s not a country where Red Cross volunteers are ever going to be experienced in responding to such things. And mobilizing thousands of volunteers and tens of millions of dollars to provide food and shelter in areas without electricity or pharmacies or heat — that’s a logistical nightmare.
A writer joins her friend Ben Heemskerk, the owner of the Brooklyn bar The Castello Plan, as he organizes a group of community volunteers to help in the hardest hit areas post-Sandy:
On Monday the same thing started all over again. Our numbers were smaller, people were returning to work, and we’d lost our escorts, but our group now included an Army captain who had just returned from Afghanistan. By noon we’d been dispatched to a church parking lot on Beach 67th Street in Rockaway Beach.
The parking lot was empty when we arrived except for one National Grid truck; National Grid is the contract operator that works with the Long Island Power Authority, whose power lines run onto the Rockaway Peninsula. Rockaway is the one part of New York City not served by Con Edison. The National Grid truck had set up a table where people could charge their phones.
It was difficult not to conclude based on our surroundings that the neighborhood had not been served at all. Within five minutes of us setting up our goods in the empty lot, and without any real outreach needed, crowds began to appear—batteries, flashlights, disinfectants, diapers and blankets were getting snatched up quickly. It’s at this point the need began to feel overwhelming, and the frightening suspicion that help, official help in the form of city officials or large established disaster-relief organizations, was not going to arrive, started to sneak up on us.
Top 5 Longreads of the Week: Financial Times, Grantland, Rany Jazayerli, The Baffler Magazine, The New Yorker, fiction from The Guardian, and a guest pick from Mark Berman.
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