Our Longreads Member Pick: A Look Back at New York Woman Magazine

This week a debate erupted about “serious journalism” in women’s magazines—and as part of this discussion, several magazine editors reflected fondly on the work of the late, great magazine New York Woman and its founding editor, Betsy Carter. New York Woman was published from 1986-1992; Carter went on to work for O, the Oprah Magazine and write books including Nothing to Fall Back On: The Life and Times of a Perpetual Optimist. She also just finished her fourth novel.

We asked Carter to share a story from the New York Woman archives, and she chose “The Jogger D.A.,” by Victoria Balfour, from 1991. Carter explains here.

Source: New York Woman
Published: Jun 21, 2013
Length: 15 minutes (3,856 words)

Who’s Left Behind When a Soldier Commits Suicide?

After her soldier-husband commits suicide, a woman finds a way to move on and help other people who have gone through similar experiences:

“The Unfortunate Friends: That’s what they call themselves. Suzanne Baty is in her 50s, with the enviable skin and perfectly placed highlights of a Mary Kay saleswoman, which she happens to be. Bethany Peterson is a couple years older than Becca, with long blonde hair, a stylish denim dress and an identical sadness in her eyes.

“They’re here tonight, gathered around a plate of goat cheese tots at Tillman’s Roadhouse in Oak Cliff, because six months or so after their loved ones died they joined a support group for people whose spouses have killed themselves. Bonded by their shared experiences and strong Christian faith, they kept meeting after the formal sessions stopped.”

Source: Dallas Observer
Published: Jun 20, 2013
Length: 22 minutes (5,691 words)

Booz Allen, the World’s Most Profitable Spy Organization

How the United States came to outsource its intelligence operations:

“Yet conversations with current and former employees of Booz Allen and U.S. intelligence officials suggest that these contractors aren’t going anywhere soon. Even if Snowden ends up costing his former employer business, the work will probably just go to its rivals. Although Booz Allen and the rest of the shadow intelligence community arose as stopgap solutions—meant to buy time as shrunken, post-Cold War agencies tried to rebuild after Sept. 11—they’ve become the vine that supports the wall. As much as contractors such as Booz Allen have come to rely on the federal government, the government relies on them even more.”

Source: Businessweek
Published: Jun 20, 2013
Length: 10 minutes (2,702 words)

College Longreads Pick of the Week: ‘The Shady Lady,’ by Danny Valdes, Dartmouth

Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher and Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. This week’s pick is “The Shady Lady,” by Danny Valdes, and it comes from Dartmouth College, where professor and bestselling author Jeff Sharlet worked with his class to create 40 Towns, a new literary journalism project.

Author: Editors
Source: Longreads
Published: Jun 20, 2013
Length: 14 minutes (3,669 words)

The Night Tony Soprano Disappeared

An excerpt from Brett Martin’s book Difficult Men. Sopranos creator and show runner David Chase and actor James Gandolfini were talented, complicated, and, at times, difficult men who created an iconic TV show:

“The massive job was made possible at least in part by creating a world in which other people managed the rest of his life. When the show became a success, Chase moved into the penthouse of the Fitzpatrick Manhattan hotel on Lexington Avenue, with the hotel staff at his disposal. He dined at the same restaurant several times a week, alternating periods at Daniel and Café Boulud. (The ease of getting restaurant reservations, he said later, only half joking, was one of the major reasons to keep extending The Sopranos’ run.) At work, he withdrew behind levels of gatekeepers. Chase’s assistant learned to institute a ‘five-minute rule’ whenever bad news was delivered: the amount of time needed for the desk-kicking and yelling to stop and a more rational response to commence. Not that there was a lot of bad news. ‘Nobody said no to David. Ever,’ she says. ‘Except Jim [Gandolfini]. And even he said no only by not showing up.'”

Source: GQ
Published: Jun 20, 2013
Length: 21 minutes (5,467 words)

Why I’m Grateful I Got Sued by American Express and What you Can Learn From My Experience

The writer on his debt troubles and his experience with a debt consolidation program:

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When the sheriff showed up at my front door and completely upended my sense of security I was only five years removed from receiving a six-figure advance for writing a memoir for Scribner at 31 and only three years removed from traveling the country sharing my heartwarming tale of triumph over adversity in connection with the release of said memoir. When I spoke about how my obsession with pop culture helped me overcome a childhood of abandonment, institutionalization and despair to become a successful writer I felt like a fraud, since all happy endings are provisional, fragile and, on some level, illusory. They’re mirages that disappear in a poof more than sturdy homes to dwell in for perpetuity.

“I was peddling a tale of triumph of adversity while convinced that I would forever be mired in adversity, that adversity had become my natural state. It’s hard to buy into yourself as a success story when, deep down, you fear that your success is neither merited nor real. It’s even harder to think of yourself as a success when you’re being sued by a credit card company, are mired in debt and hand-cuffed to a dodgy debt consolidation group for the indefinite future.”

Published: Jun 18, 2013
Length: 16 minutes (4,161 words)

When Domestic Violence Becomes a Mass Shooting

Mass shootings tied to domestic violence aren’t as uncommon as we may believe them to be:

“A woman being killed by her boyfriend is a horrifying crime, but it’s not unusual. Domestic-violence deaths, especially with a gun, are relatively common occurrences—two-thirds of women killed with a firearm in the United States are killed by an intimate partner, according to federal crime statistics. What splashed this story across national news was the death count—a domestic-violence homicide that became a mass shooting.

“At the same meeting where Sumpter retold the night’s events, a parade of city leaders stepped up to the podium, trying to assure the terrified crowd that the city was safe. Federal Way deputy mayor Jim Ferrell, a longtime King County deputy prosecutor who worked with the late and much beloved King County prosecutor Norm Maleng, spoke. He quoted Maleng as saying that ‘domestic violence tears at the very fabric of our community,’ and said Federal Way would ‘bind the fabric of our community back up.’ Ferrell also said that in 18 years as a prosecutor, he’d “never seen or heard of witnesses” being taken out like this.

“Which was odd, because there have actually been quite a few recent mass shootings on the national news that escalated from domestic-violence situations.”

Source: The Stranger
Published: Jun 12, 2013
Length: 16 minutes (4,011 words)

Missing Michael Hastings

The editor of BuzzFeed remembers a friend, colleague and fearless journalist. Hastings died Tuesday in a car crash in Los Angeles, at age 33:

“Michael Hastings was really only interested in writing stories someone didn’t want him to write — often his subjects; occasionally his editor. While there is no template for a great reporter, he was one for reasons that were intrinsic to who he was: ambitious, skeptical of power and conventional wisdom, and incredibly brave. And he was warm and honest in a way that left him many unlikely friends among people you’d expect to hate him.”

Author: Ben Smith
Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Jun 18, 2013
Length: 8 minutes (2,014 words)

My Mom Was An Underground Railroad For Abused Women: What She Taught Me About Feminism And Fear

The writer reflects on what her mom did to help others:

“As a child, I didn’t understand most of the midnight phone calls to my mom, or the times women would come over with children in tow, sometimes even in pajamas, and I would be told to go entertain them while Mama ensconced herself in her bedroom with their mother.

“Once, my mom spotted a bruised woman with three children holding a cardboard sign in the Wal-Mart parking lot. It was pouring down rain. I was seven.

“‘Stay in the car,’ she said, locking me in. She went to talk to the woman.”

Source: XOJane
Published: Jan 3, 2013
Length: 9 minutes (2,259 words)

How I Met My Wife

Novelist Robert Boswell tells the story of how he met his wife, the author Antonya Nelson, and uses the story to explore how fiction is crafted:

“Why are we drawn to stories about people falling in love? There are likely a host of reasons, but here’s a good one: marriage, when observed from a place of solitude, has the power of dream. Solitary people fall in love with couples, imagining their own lives transformed by such a union. And once the transformation finally happens, people need to talk about it, telling not only their families, friends, and strangers on the bus but also themselves—repeating it to make it real, to investigate the mystery of marital metamorphosis. And they get good at the telling. People who cannot otherwise put together an adequately coherent narrative to get you to the neighborhood grocery will nonetheless have a beautifully shaped tale of how he met she (or he met he, or she met she) and became we.”

Source: Tin House
Published: Jun 3, 2013
Length: 29 minutes (7,468 words)