Search Results for: new york times

Reading List: The Writing Life vs. The Blinking Cursor

Longreads Pick

This week’s picks from Emily includes stories from Rookie, Brain Pickings, The Millions, and The New York Times.

Source: Longreads
Published: Sep 29, 2013

A Longreads Guest Pick: Sari Botton on ‘Not Weird About Brooklyn’

Sari is a writer and editor living in Rosendale, N.Y. She writes the Conversations With Writers Braver Than Me column on The Rumpus. An anthology she edited for Seal Press, Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York, will be released Oct. 8.

“My favorite longread this week is ‘Not Weird About Brooklyn‘ by Helen Rubinstein in the Paris Review Daily. Having left the East Village for upstate eight years ago with very mixed feelings on the matter, I tend to be very curious about other people’s stories of quitting New York City. Love-hate relationships with the place are so common as to border on the cliche – ditto the city’s tenacious gravitational pull despite the hate part of that equation, despite diminishing returns over time lived there. Rubinstein acknowledges the cliche, even the one inherent in writing about it, ‘the trope of the single woman in New York,’ while giving new, nuanced, if meta, voice to it. Her criteria for a potential mate made me laugh (and I cheered this one: ‘Not anti-memoir.’). I was reminded of an essay by John Tierny in the New York Times Magazine in the mid nineties about how fundamentally picky single New Yorkers can be. (In that one, a criteria for potential mates was, ‘…has resolved her control drama.’) Nine days before she leaves, as she packs up her apartment, Rubinstein seems at once melancholy and resigned to leaving, and as if she’s trying to convince herself she’s made the right choice. It’s a familiar conversation, one I have with myself all the time.”

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How Doug Band Drove a Wedge Through the Clinton Dynasty

Longreads Pick

How the world of politics works. MacGillis tells the story of Doug Band, who rose up to become one of President Clinton’s most trusted advisers, until his own business interests got in the way:

“Of course, it was only natural that Band would tap his existing network. What is striking is the extent to which Teneo’s business model depends on his relationship with Clinton. Band’s former White House colleague says Teneo is essentially a p.r. firm that is able to charge above-market rates because it persuades executives that Band and the ties he brings are an essential service. ‘If they were paying $25,000 or $40,000 a month for p.r., then $100,000 a month, from the eyes of the CEO, … it’s not going to crush him,’ says the former colleague. (According to The New York Times, Teneo’s monthly fees can be as high as $250,000.) The longtime Clinton associate says that Band’s pitch to clients was that he was ‘able to fly around [with Clinton] and decide who flies around with him. … The whole thing is resting on his access.'”

Published: Sep 24, 2013
Length: 36 minutes (9,007 words)

Sexting, Shame and Suicide

Longreads Pick

Fifteen-year-old Audrie Pott took her own life after nude photos of her were circulated around school by high school classmates. Three boys were later arrested and charged. It’s “a shocking tale of sexual assault in the Digital Age” that’s becoming less uncommon as a number of high-profile cases similar to Pott’s makes headlines while many others go unreported:

“‘It’s a perfect storm of technology and hormones,’ says lawyer Lori Andrews, director of the Institute for Science, Law and Technology in Chicago. ‘Teen sexting is all a way of magnifying girls’ fantasies of being a star of their own movies, and boys locked in a room bragging about sexual conquest.’

‘But as of yet the law provides little protection to the rights of those violated. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act effectively means that no Internet provider can be forced to take down content for invading a person’s privacy or even defaming them. ‘I could sue The New York Times for invading my privacy or Rolling Stone for defaming me,’ Andrews says. ‘But I couldn’t sue and get my picture off a website called sluttyseventhgraders.com.’

“The flip side of this ugly trend is that when gang-rape participants and bystanders record and disseminate pictures of an assault, public outrage is inflamed and cops and prosecutors have evidence they can take to court. This can mean rape victims get more justice than in years past. Arguably, the Steubenville rape would never have been prosecuted without the video. However, since so many of the incidents involve juveniles, punishment is neither swift nor certain.”

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Sep 17, 2013
Length: 24 minutes (6,029 words)

5 Stories on What Happens to Whistleblowers After They Speak Out

Above: Mark Felt

Julia Wick is a native Angeleno who writes about literature, Los Angeles, and cities. She is currently finishing an Urban Planning degree at USC.

With Chelsea Manning sentenced to 35 years in prison and Edward Snowden’s future still uncertain, it seems a pertinent time to look at what becomes of our whistleblowers after the initial flurry of publicity fades. On the public stage and popular culture, whistleblowers are both celebrated and reviled, categorized as snitches and traitors, and heroes and martyrs. They are almost always seen as symbols, but they are also often people whose lives are shattered. The U.S. has had some version of whistleblower protection laws on the books since 1778, but whistleblowers themselves have still often faced reprisal, have been left jobless and hounded, personally attacked and professionally discredited. Here are the stories of six famous whistleblowers, and their lives long after the press has picked up and left town.

1. “Anatomy of a Whistleblower,” by Laurie Abraham (Mother Jones, 2004)

Jesselyn Radack is a “Lifetime TV writer’s dream”—the mother of two young children and pregnant with her third who had privately struggled with MS since college. She was a government lawyer with the Justice Department’s ethics unit when a colleague asked her to look over the FBI’s interrogation of the John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban” captured during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. She spoke up about the impropriety of Lindh’s being questioned without a lawyer present, and quickly became emblematic of the Ashcroft-era treatment of whistleblowers, her life turned upside-down. And then she did the most unlikely thing of all—became an activist for whistleblowers across the nation. She is currently the National Security & Human Rights Director of the Government Accountability Project.

2. “Serpico on Serpico,” by Corey Kilgannon (New York Times, January 2010)

The cinematic version of Frank Serpico’s life—Serpico, starring Al Pacino in the title role—begins with Serpico being shot in the face during an attempted drug bust and ends with closing credits saying he is “now living somewhere in Switzerland.” Kilgannon’s profile of the honest cop who exposed NYPD corruption picks up four decades later, long after Serpico’s lost years in Europe. Bearded, bitter, and in his early seventies, this Serpico lives a monastic life along the Hudson, just a few hours north of his former city. Perhaps the most poignant scene involves a rewatching of the famous film, which Serpico has never seen in its entirety, on the reporter’s laptop in a small town public library, where “the real Mr. Serpico stared out the window, unable to watch—too painful, he said.”

3. “The Whistle-Blower,” by Pamela Colloff (Texas Monthly, April 2003)

Pamela Colloff’s character-driven profile of Enron whistleblower Sherron Watkins is a reminder of why fans of longform journalism love Texas Monthly. This is a deftly drawn and richly layered narrative of what life is like for a whistleblower who, despite being nationally-lauded, still finds herself rejected by the high-rolling Houston society set to which she once belonged.

4. “I’m the Guy They Called Deep Throat,” by John D. O’Connor (Vanity Fair July 2005)

No collection of whistleblower stories would be complete without a mention of Mark Felt, née Deep Throat, the source who leaked the details of Watergate to the Washington Post. Felt, who was ultimately responsible for the downfall of an American president, could easily be considered the ur-whistleblower of the last century. Written nearly three decades after the fact, O’Connor’s story finally exposed Felt’s identity.

5. “The Secret Sharer: Is Thomas Drake an Enemy of the State?” by Jane Mayer (New Yorker, May 23, 2011)

Long before Snowden made headlines, Thomas Drake had grave doubts about the NSA’s use of domestic surveillance. Drake, then a senior executive at the NSA, to The Baltimore Sun and was ultimately indicted under the Espionage Act. Mayer uses Drake’s story as a lens to explore the larger issues of warrantless surveillance in post–9/11 America, and though the piece itself is more than two years old and dealing with a case that has now been dropped, it is still relevant, perhaps unsettlingly so.


Photo via Wikimedia Commons

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Reading List: What Happens to Whistleblowers After They Speak Out

Longreads Pick

From Deep Throat to Thomas Drake: Julia Wick selects five classic stories from The New York Times, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair and more.

Author: Julia Wick
Source: Longreads
Published: Aug 26, 2013

The Notorious MSG’s Unlikely Formula For Success

Longreads Pick

In 1968, an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine wondered if eating food in American Chinese food restaurants caused feelings of numbness and fatigue. Decades of research has shown little consensus on whether consumption of MSG is bad for us. How the MSG myth was born and propagated:

“‘The Chinese food causes thirst,’ he wrote, ‘which would also be due to the high sodium content. The syndrome may therefore be due merely to the large quantity of salt in the food.’ MSG was almost an afterthought: ‘Others have suggested it may be caused by the monosodium glutamate seasoning used to a great extent for seasoning in Chinese restaurants.’ He closed ruminating on the idea that the presence of MSG might make the sodium-related symptoms ‘more acute.’

“But it was the MSG bit that people focused on. The New York Times quickly followed the NEJM’s lead, publishing a small write-up on the issue a month later (Chinese Restaurant Syndrome Puzzles Doctors,’ May 19, 1968). Also fueling the burgeoning myth was a latent distrust of what happened behind the kitchen door at Chinese restaurants, even as they became increasingly common to American diners in the late 1960s. ‘To be suspicious of the goings on in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant was not uncommon,’ food historian Ian Mosby writes in his paper ‘”That Won-Ton Soup Headache”: The Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, MSG and the Making of American Food, 1968–1980.’ For many, suspicions of mysterious meats and other ‘excessive’ practices were still present.”

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Aug 15, 2013
Length: 23 minutes (5,837 words)

Interview with My Mom, One Who Stayed Home

Longreads Pick

After reading the New York Times Magazine story on women who “opted out,” Gay asks her mom about her own experience:

Sometimes when people talk about women and the workforce, they say a woman cannot truly be equal to a man unless she has her own income. What do you think?

“Well. Equality. What a word. When we choose go outside in the world, when we come home, we’re still mommy. The second shift starts. Equality doesn’t exist, period, even when you share the chores. Some days it can be 70/30 and other days it is 30/70. I don’t think that’s what we should be fighting for.

What should we be fighting for?

“Men participating more in the home, but it’s petty to say 50/50, because life doesn’t allow that.”

Author: Roxane Gay
Source: The Hairpin
Published: Aug 13, 2013
Length: 10 minutes (2,650 words)

Longreads Member Pick: 'This Town,' by Mark Leibovich

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This week’s Member Pick is from the new book by Mark Leibovich, the chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine and a writer who’s been featured on Longreads frequently in the past.

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.

Read an excerpt here.

Become a Longreads Member to receive this week’s pick.

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Illustration by Kjell Reigstad; photo from Wikimedia Commons

Longreads Member Pick: In Washington, D.C., Where ‘We’re All Obituaries Waiting to Happen’

Longreads Pick

This week’s Member Pick is from the new book by Mark Leibovich, the chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine and a writer who’s been featured on Longreads frequently in the past.

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.

Read an excerpt here.

Become a Longreads Member to receive this week’s pick.

Source: Longreads
Published: Aug 6, 2013
Length: 40 minutes (10,182 words)