For 41 years, Washington City Paper has been one of America’s essential alt-weekly publications and a launchpad for some of the finest journalists of their generation, including Ta-Nehisi Coates, Katherine Boo, Jason Cherkis, and David Carr (RIP). This week it publishes its last-ever print edition — don’t worry, it will continue to run online — […]
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Washington City Paper, Astra Taylor and Sunaura Taylor, Leslie Jamison, Mark Pupo, and Madeleine Aggeler.
Longreads Best of 2022: All of Our No. 1 Story Picks
All the stories we’ve selected as number one in our weekly Top 5 newsletter.
The Death Artist
Her medium: the cremains of departed loved ones. Her mission: to change your perspective on the end of life.
1999 Was The Last Time Everything Was Fine
A personal essay nostalgically looking back at 1999, a buoyant time for the economy and publishing–before the bursting of the dot com bubble, a stock market crash, and the plane crash that killed John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessett Kennedy, and her sister.
‘Smoking freebase has pretty much been my job for the past year.’
In the New Yorker, Naomi Fry writes about Cat Marnell’s new memoir in a piece that’s part review, part analysis of women’s addiction stories.
Longreads Best of 2018: All of Our No. 1 Story Picks
Here’s every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.
Why Quotas Still Don’t Work for Journalism
Quotas allow superiors to blame failure on subordinates and take credit for success.
‘This Land’ Was Our Land: A Eulogy for a Groundbreaking Magazine
“This Land”closes its print edition this month, capping seven years of extraordinary local journalism.
Bundyville Chapter Three: A Clan Not to Cross
A look into the Bundy family’s history reveals how they began to distrust the federal government. From nuclear testing programs in the 1950s to the decades-long Sagebrush Rebellion starting in the 1970s, Cliven Bundy came to believe that the government was out to get him and became emboldened to fight back.

