Search Results for: New York Times

The Dirty Little Secrets of Search

Longreads Pick

Does the collective wisdom of the Web really say that J.C. Penney has the most essential site when it comes to dresses? And bedding? And area rugs? And dozens of other words and phrases? The New York Times asked an expert in online search, Doug Pierce of Blue Fountain Media in New York, to study this question, as well as Penney’s astoundingly strong search-term performance in recent months. What he found suggests that the digital age’s most mundane act, the Google search, often represents layer upon layer of intrigue. And the intrigue starts in the sprawling, subterranean world of “black hat” optimization, the dark art of raising the profile of a Web site with methods that Google considers tantamount to cheating.

Published: Feb 13, 2011
Length: 15 minutes (3,880 words)

The Irish Affliction

The Irish Affliction

Front of Book: Manhattan Transfers: A Longreads List

Front of Book: Manhattan Transfers: A Longreads List

Dealing with Julian Assange and the Secrets He Spilled

Dealing with Julian Assange and the Secrets He Spilled

The White House Looks for Work

The White House Looks for Work

Detroitism: What Does 'Ruin Porn' Tell Us About the Motor City?

Detroitism: What Does ‘Ruin Porn’ Tell Us About the Motor City?

AIDS and Media Coverage, the Early Years: A Longreads List

Logan Sachon is a writer and editor based in Portland.

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Rare cancer seen in 41 homosexuals 

1981. New York Times. Lawrence K. Altman. 

903 words / 3.5 minutes 

No mention of AIDS, no utter of HIV, but this is where mainstream media’s coverage of AIDS starts, with the New York Times first mention of a new disease in 1981. 

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AIDS in the heartland

1987. St Paul Pioneer Press. Jacqui Banaszynski. 

21,000 words (est) / 84 minutes (note: not Instapaper-friendly)

This Pulitzer-winning three-part series follows Dick Hanson — farmer, political activist, and gay man — from diagnosis to death. The writer describes the piece as such: “I wanted to be able not just to write about a disease, but THIS disease and all that went with it … the prejudice, the fear, the distance, the judging, the legal, financial and moral consequences, the lifestyle and the love …” Many people cite this article as the first time they were really drawn in to the AIDS crisis. 

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Fighting AIDS all the way

1989. New York Times Magazine. Larry Josephs. 

3,695 words / 15 minutes

The harrowing plunge 

1990. New York Times Magazine. Larry Josephs. 

5,905 words / 24 minutes 

Larry Josephs, 34, writer about AIDS, dies of the disease 

1991. New York Times. Alessandra Stanley 

360 words / 1.5 minutes 

In these two essays, Josephs writes first about his diagnoses and treatment and then about what happens when he gets very sick. Heart-wrenching personal voice coupled with details and research from someone who desperately wanted and needed to know everything about the disease. Honest, brave first-person journalism. 

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Out of control: AIDS and the corruption of medical science 

2006. Harper’s. Celia Farber. 

12,163 words / 48 minutes 

From 1987 to 1995, Farber wrote a column in SPIN about AIDS called “Words from the front.” (Those articles can be found here.) She was one of the first and only journalists to cover scientists who questioned the link between AIDS and HIV and questioned the use of AZT to fight it. These scientists — including National Academy of Sciences member and Berkeley researcher Dr. Peter Duesberg — were labeled “AIDS denialists” by the scientific community, and Farber’s coverage of them put her in that pot, too. This article was published in 2006, but Farber had been writing about its topic for nearly 20 years. The piece provoked heated responses, including letters from the scientists who are credited with discovering  HIV. This response from the Columbia Journalism Review is in line with the criticism of the piece, the author, and its thesis. 

The Road to Economic Crisis Is Paved with Euros

The Road to Economic Crisis Is Paved with Euros

A Son of the Bayou, Torn Over the Shrimping Life

A Son of the Bayou, Torn Over the Shrimping Life

The Man Who Spilled the Secrets

Longreads Pick

The collaboration between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the Web’s notorious information anarchist, and some of the world’s most respected news organizations began at The Guardian, a nearly 200-year-old British paper. What followed was a clash of civilizations—and ambitions—as Guardian editors and their colleagues at The New York Times and other media outlets struggled to corral a whistle-blowing stampede amid growing distrust and anger. With Assange detained in the U.K., the author reveals the story behind the headlines.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Jan 6, 2011
Length: 29 minutes (7,338 words)