This Town, published by Penguin’s Blue Rider Press, is Leibovich’s insider tale of life inside the Beltway bubble of Washington, D.C., and how the social lives of political lifers, journalists and hangers-on complicate the truth about what really goes on in the capital. The prologue and first chapter, featured here for Longreads Members, take place at the funeral for NBC Meet the Press moderator Tim Russert.
Clara Bow was the original It girl, so much so that her 1927 film, titled—what else?—“It,” more or less defined the phenomenon. This piece, from Petersen’s Scandals of Classic Hollywood series, offers a perfectly juicy take on Ms. Bow.
2. “Almost Famous” (Katherine Stewart, Santa Barbara Magazine, Oct./Nov. 2006)
Stewart goes beyond the usual Edie clichés and delves into Sedgwick family lore, as well as Edie’s post-Factory return to Santa Barbara.
McInerney’s piece—a semi-seminal take on uber-It girl Chloe Sevigny in the early days of her downtown reign—captures a weird freeze-frame in time: Sevigny pre-Kids fame, and downtown New York in its last gasps of grittiness.
“Perky, pretty, and remarkably plugged-in, a pack of young publicists have become the darlings of New York’s demimonde. But be careful—they bite.” Detail-packed, with deliciously good dialogue and a healthy dollop of fun, this is classic Grigoriadis.
Cory Kennedy was just a regular high school hipster until party photographer Mark “The Cobrasnake” Hunter snapped her picture at an LA club. And then—practically overnight and before her parents had a chance to figure out what was going on—she was everywhere, a club kid, model, and message board fashion icon, with her very own column in Nylon. This is the making of an internet It Girl.
Emily Perper is word-writing human for hire. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker.
In light of the recent Zimmerman trials, I’d like to share these four pieces. I’ve thought a lot about this blog post by Mary, who writes, “Another thing I’ve noticed is that people are more concerned with being the best ally than they are with the concerns/oppression of the marginalized group(s) that they’re allying with. When the focus becomes about you and your feelings instead of the people facing discrimination, you’re being a really shitty ally.”
More than you ever wanted to know about feral hogs and how to kill them. When federal agents are picking them off from helicopters, there’s obviously more at stake than just nuisance. Between the millions of dollars in damage and the idea of the creature as an ‘invasive species,’ I was tickled to death by the serious problem (and solution) posed by these animals, who are smart but ugly, therefore fair game for mass eradication. The issue is beautifully explained by Gwyneth Doland. This is, to me, a classic, successful alt-weekly story — take something that’s under the snout of normal people, zoom in, examine. ‘Some species just don’t play nice with others.’
Also, after a week of layoffs from some of the country’s bigger newspaper chains it is worth saying — support your local alternative newsweekly!
“I must admit that it was intended consciously as a social document. … [but] the storyteller’s first duty is to the story.”
-From the 1991 documentary “The Complete Citizen Kane,” on the Orson Welles masterpiece. The film features interviews with Welles from 1960 and 1982, as well as an interview with New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, whose history of the film was published in 1971.
Heinlein is a Pushcart Prize-winning writer who spent more than two years at the Castle, a prominent halfway house in Harlem, where she met convicts who were preparing for the outside world. Read more…
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick:
The Internet may have turned us all into self diagnosticians, but we still crave health guidance from the media. “Eat this, not that,” admonishes Dave Zinczenko. Exercise 30 minutes a day, three times a week. Or 10 minutes, three times a day. But writer Stephanie Maris suggests that it’s not just conflicting science that confuses us, it’s bad health reporting. In her compelling critique of health journalism, Maris identifies why readers love health and wellness news, and how journalists can sometimes confound more than elucidate.
“…[I]n many ways health reporting has come to mimic tabloid entertainment: stories on nutrition, fitness and lifestyle are ubiquitous and hard to sift through, which makes it difficult to separate fact from fiction. The result is a cycle of (often inaccurate) “bad for you” and “next big thing” stories that risk discrediting the entire health beat. On top of that, in place of real health help, readers and viewers are left following a potentially harmful “Media Diet” based on miracle cures, fad diets, superfoods and food scares.”
Today’s video pick is Modern Comedian’s short documentary on comedian Sara Schaefer, who fell deep into debt even while she was pursuing her dream career and earning two Emmys as a writer for Jimmy Fallon. (Schaefer now co-hosts the MTV series Nikki & Sara LIVE, which has its second season premiere on July 30.)
Emily Perper is word-writing human for hire. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker.
The student journalist, the Afghani mother, the elderly custodian, the Chinese orphan boy: each of these pieces forces the reader to stop and consider the extraordinary stories of seemingly ordinary people.
“We met when I was 15 and he was 7. Matthew was always ‘my little brother in China’ … But how can I pretend to really know what it was like to grow up in the situation he did?” Yellis tries to raise a troubled Chinese teen at his parents’ orphanage.
Delving into the daily lives of Afghani women, Chuang meets Amina, whose steadfastness saw her family through war, changing regimes and the disappearance of her youngest brother at the hands of KGB soldiers.
Valerie Vande Panne is an independent journalist covering life and human interests. This week, she chose a series of articles to help give readers a better understanding of Detroit.
“As a journalist, I am often asked, ‘How do you cut through the noise?’ In other words, how do I sift through the thousands upon thousands of bits of information, ‘facts,’ media outlets, and organizations vying and manipulating to get my attention? One tool I rely on is credible sources—actual human beings, experts of any given field. It starts with curiosity: I read their work; I question everything.
“In the case of Detroit, there is one writer I turn to for understanding again and again—a woman who is so prolific, your heart beats with her words as you read, and you miss Detroit as if the city is a long lost lover who has broken your heart—though, perhaps, you’ve never even felt the Motor City’s aching concrete beneath your feet.
“Anna Clark’s words are gems of Detroit and offered to you with grace, so you too may intimately know this American city and her people.
“There’s been a lot of loud noise about Detroit these last few weeks, much of it from people who have never spent a moment breathing her air, and do not hold Detroit in their heart—how can one say what a place is, or what she needs, or what her people must do, when there is such a fundamental and profound disconnect?
“If you care to read anything about Detroit, I humbly suggest you make it one of, if not all three of these wordsmithed pieces of truth. Take them in, let them seep into you, and if it pleases you, lift Detroit with your spirit.”
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