“A great problem for the mad in the mid-20th century was that the sane were always trying to get in on their act. Sincere people who were not mad wanted to interfere with the mad in various ways in order to relieve them of their suffering and isolation, while others, equally sincere, wanted to get down with them and reinterpret their crazy ramblings as meta-sanity.”
“One recalled that as a girl, she would enact a nocturnal parental ritual in reverse: She, the child, would creep out from her bed to listen at her mother’s door for the precious sound of breathing. ‘She was just terrified,’ Morris says, ‘that her mother would die.’”
“There was a moment in sports when employing a coach was unimaginable—and then came a time when not doing so was unimaginable. We care about results in sports, and if we care half as much about results in schools and in hospitals we may reach the same conclusion.”
I’m thrilled to announce a new partner in Longreads: Joyce King Thomas. Joyce is the former executive vice president and chief creative officer of McCann-Erickson. She created Mastercard’s “Priceless” campaign, among other outstanding work.
Joyce will be working with me on advertising initiatives for Longreads. She and I actually go way back: She’s been a longtime Longreads community member (here’s her page), and we both share a passion for journalism.
Two years ago, I launched Longreads simply because I was looking for something to read. What I hadn’t expected was that this community would preside over a renaissance for long-form storytelling on the web.
The audience is growing by leaps and bounds (use of the hashtag on Twitter has quadrupled over the past few months), and every day I hear more great ideas from Longreads Members about how we can improve.
With Joyce as a partner, I feel truly lucky, and with her onboard we’re laying the foundation for a broader editorial and curator network. There’s so much more that we’d like to create to serve this community, and advertising (along with the generosity of your Longreads Memberships) will help support this growth.
She and I will be working with a small number of brands that want to help support outstanding storytelling, and create some cool stuff in the process. If you’d like to request an invite to participate, you can reach Joyce here.
We’ve also worked closely with publishers, and we’re going to continue to do that in new and interesting ways that will be relevant to readers. And of course, we’ll always be open and totally transparent about how we do everything. I’m glad to hear from anyone—members, publishers, authors, curators—who wants to know more or get involved.
It has been a incredible two and a half years for Longreads, and I’m thankful to the entire community for its support as we continue to grow.
UPDATE: This offer is now closed (as of 7/19/2011). Thanks to NYRB and all the Longreads Members who signed up!
Last month we introduced the (completely optional) Longreads Membership, and we’ve been thrilled with the response so far. I wanted to personally thank everyone for their support and encouragement.
We’re also excited to announce the first official perk for our Longreads Members: a free, three-month digital subscription to the New York Review of Books.
We hope to continue offering occasional free perks to Longreads Members as a thank-you for your support of our service. It might be a digital subscription, like today’s perk, or it might just be something we think you’ll like because you have really great taste.
Every time I think @markarms couldn’t get any more genius with Longreads.com, he goes and adds some brilliant piece of functionality I hadn’t even considered.
Introducing automatic #longreads aggregation – No sign up, no reg, no passwords, no crap. If you’ve ever tweeted the hashtag, then you’ve already got an account. Just go to longreads.com/(YOURTWITTERNAME) and there they are.
Fun fact: Longreads turned 2 years old last month.
Since then, our community has blown up into something bigger but still just as wonderful.
So today we’re launching Community Picks, a new section on Longreads designed to showcase all the amazing stories you’re sharing every day. Community Picks features the most popular and recent tweets on the #longreads hashtag. Go take a look around.
We’re excited about this, because it’s the community that powers Longreads, and we wanted to find ways to better highlight everyone’s diverse reading tastes.
Here’s another nice thing: You can also share your own reading list based on recent stories you’ve tweeted as #longreads. (Here’s Michelle Legro’s list as an excellent example.) If you’re a regular Longreader, type your Twitter username into this URL to see them: http://www.longreads.com/usernamehere. You can add to the list by tweeting stories with the #longreads tag.
There are still some quirks, but we’re excited to keep building. If you see anything strange, or if you do not want to be featured in the Community Picks section, drop me a note (mark@longreads.com).
And a few thank yous: Longreads is powered with support from Twitter, Readability and Instapaper, so we’d like to thank all of them for their help over the past several months.
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One last thing: Help us keep growing and become a Longreads Member
Today I’m also launching a fund-raising campaign that I hope will be successful enough to keep building Longreads and the services associated with it.
For $3 a month, you can become a Longreads Member, which will get you early access to new features, and hopefully some other very small, modest perks in the future. If you buy a one-year subscription upfront, you’ll save $6 and you’ll get a limited-edition Longreads Travel Mug.
This is all totally optional—Longreads will remain free for all users. That said, a Longreads Membership is a great way to show your support for the service and ensure that we continue to grow.
Thanks to the entire Longreads community for a great two years. More soon.
Rob Sheffield and company at Rolling Stone Longreads (Taken with Instagram at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe)
such a wonderful discussion tonight! sammie rubes and i were sitting way in the back but still really enjoyed the journalism war stories and advice
Thanks everyone for a fun night with Rolling Stone, Longreads and Housing Works. Packed house and excellent audience questions for Rob Sheffield, Jeff Goodell, Brian Hiatt and Will Dana.
To get you ready for the panel, we’ve collected a couple great stories from each of the three panelists: Jeff Goodell, Brian Hiatt and Rob Sheffield.
Jeff Goodell:
The Dark Lord of Coal Country, Nov. 29, 2010: The Rolling Stone investigation that forced the resignation of Don Blankenship, the coal industry’s dirtiest CEO
As the World Burns, Jan. 6, 2010: How Big Oil and Big Coal mounted one of the most agressive lobbying campaigns in history to block progress on global warming
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