The New York Times

At the New York Times, Penelope Green profiles Canadian singer-songwriter K.D. Lang 25 years after the release of Lang’s album Ingénue. Green writes about how Lang has come to terms with her success, her “chapter in the history of the gay rights movement,” and about reaching middle age as an artist.

The eight young Ph.D. students who died in a fire at Cornell University in 1967 have become the reason for one amateur detective to live. But why is William Fogle obsessed with other peoples’ tragedy?

On five trips to Iraq, Rukmini Callimachi and a team of other New York Times journalists scoured files and other papers left behind by the Islamic State, which help explain how the so-called Caliphate had been able to stay in power there for a number of years. The impression left behind? That ISIS’s penchant for brutality is matched by its acumen for efficient bureaucracy. All manner of infrastructure was apparently maintained better under the group than it had been under the Iraqi government. Money was raised not only through the sale of stollen oil, but through agriculture and through well organized and enforced taxation. Callimachi covers this in an interactive piece.

Nakesha Williams’ promising life was derailed by mental illness. She resisted help from friends, family members, and social workers and died on the street.

There has never been a competitor in the history of snowboard cross like Lindsey Jacobellis, which is why it was all the more shocking that Jacobellis floundered in three consecutive Winter Olympics. To the public, those slip-ups came to define her, and John Branch examines how Jacobellis has succeeded to quiet both the external and internal noise: by working with a mental strength coach whose previous experience came helping financial traders in the high pressure environment of Wall Street.

Historians of African-diaspora cooking have considered hill rice a mythical, long-extinct staple. Then, one of them stumbled on it while walking in the Trinidadian countryside.

The beach-bum version of Jimmy Buffett has become a huge brand® with financial interests in foodstuffs, hotels, casinos, and even adult living communities. Buffett is the original escapist who has long escaped his original slacker identity. A businessman wrapped in a Hawaiian shirt, he’s worth more money than Bruce Springsteen. (Not bad for a guy who only had one top ten song, compared to Springsteen, who has had 12.)

In her first cover piece for the New York Times magazine, Jenna Wortham profiles RuPaul, making note of the ways in which he — and his 9-year-old reality competition TV show — have had to evolve along with shifting understandings of gender, and the politics around it.

Many preschool teachers earn around just $10 an hour in programs that are chronically understaffed and underfunded. And that’s just the beginning of the problems they face.

Possibly the most powerful piece the Times’ Style section has ever produced, this interactive story beautifully illuminates how self-consciously women must move through the world, especially after they dare to be audacious enough to speak out about their victimization.