The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
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Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.
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A GQ writer whose diet typically consists of chicken fingers and waffle fries receives lessons on food and cooking from the highly regarded chef, Daniel Boulud.

The James Beard Foundation announced the finalists for its 2016 food media awards last week, so it’s a great time to make a cup of tea and cozy up to some excellent food writing. You might have already read some of the nominees featured here throughout 2015 — “The Brief, Extraordinary Life of Cody Spafford,” “Straight-Up Passing,” “Corn Wars,” “The Second Most Famous Thing to Happen to Hiroshima,” “The Chef Who Saved My Life,” and “On Chicken Tenders,” which features some of the most passionate writing about fried snack foods to hit the internet’s tubes — but here are six more you might have missed:
Worth it for the title alone, Emily’s piece wends from 350-year-old pro-pig promotional literature to the interstate tensions at the 1985 Ham & Yam Festival — with a pit stop to visit The Oldest Peanut in the World — in service of a single question: is the ham capital of the U.S. in Virginia, or North Carolina? (And a runner-up question: Why does it matter?)

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.
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Eva Holland | Longreads |February 2016 | 25 minutes (6,339 words)
There’s been more talk than usual lately about the state of freelance writing. There are increasing numbers of tools for freelancers: among them, the various incarnations of “Yelp for Journalists.” There’s advice floating around; there are Facebook support groups.
With the exception of one 10-month staff interlude, I’ve been freelancing full time now for seven and a half years. I’ve learned a few things along the way, but I also still have a ton of questions, and often feel as if I’ve outgrown some of the advice I see going by in the social media stream.
So I gathered a handful of well-established freelance writers and asked them to participate in a group email conversation about their experiences and advice. Josh Dean is a Brooklyn-based writer for the likes of Outside, GQ, Rolling Stone, and Popular Science. Jason Fagone lives in the Philadelphia area and has recently published stories in the New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, Matter, and Grantland. May Jeong is based in Kabul, and has written for publications including the New York Times Magazine, the Guardian, and Al-Jazeera America. (She managed to fit in her contributions to this roundtable while reporting from a remote corner of Afghanistan, so thank you, May.) As for me, I live in Canada’s northern Yukon Territory, and my work has appeared in AFAR, Pacific Standard, Smithsonian, and other places on both sides of the border. Read more…

Lisa Rab | Charlotte Magazine | Feb. 1, 2016 | 15 minutes (3,769 words)
A searing, nuanced portrait of a single mother living in poverty in Charlotte, N.C.
Esther Schor | Tablet Magazine | Feb. 10, 2016 | 37 minutes (9,455 words)
A three-part essay on Jewishness, cancer, and finding love in your fifties. (Read Part II and Part III).
Caity Weaver | GQ | Feb. 11, 2016 | 21 minutes (5,338 words)
Justin Bieber is not easy to talk to. Despite that, Caity Weaver is able to write a funny and engaging celebrity profile of the pop star.
Nicholas Phillips | Riverfront Times | Feb. 10, 2016 | 23 minutes (5,882 words)
Looking for answers in a decades-old murder case set deep in the Missouri Ozarks.
Don Van Natta Jr., Seth Wickersham | ESPN | Feb. 11, 2016 | 24 minutes (6,044 words)
The story behind the complicated and bitter fight between owners in the NFL over which teams would have the right to move to Los Angeles and build a stadium.

I’ve always been fascinated by how narrative journalism gets commissioned, reported, and published–but the most perplexing part of the entire system is the continued power imbalance between writers and publishers.
This imbalance persists in spite of the internet “democratizing” publishing. More digital publishers are embracing feature writing, but the process behind the scenes feels stuck in the past–a time-consuming marathon of unanswered emails and rejection. Read more…
R. Kelly gave GQ reporter Chris Heath three days to interview him without any restrictions. The results are illuminating, if not occasionally baffling.

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.
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Call me an optimist, but I have high hopes for tonight’s State of the Union—and not just because the White House will be live-annotating it on Genius. We’ve been promised that President Obama’s seventh and final State of the Union address will depart from convention—and the usual laundry list of legislative priorities—in favor of “a grander call to arms on the major challenges facing the nation.” What that may mean is anyone’s guess, but here are six stories about Obama and one speech, for those who like to scroll while they watch. You can livestream the State of the Union here, starting at 9pm ET.
Written as Obama campaigned for a second term, Fallows analyzed the first chapter of his presidency, in historical context.
A look at hundreds of pages of internal White House documents, and what they reveal about the president’s decision-making process
The late Michael Hastings on Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya, and what it says about his evolution as commander in chief.
The black binder arrived at the White House residence just before 8 p.m., and President Obama took it upstairs to begin his nightly reading. The briefing book was dated Jan. 8, 2010, but it looked like the same package delivered every night, with printouts of speeches, policy recommendations and scheduling notes. Near the back was a purple folder, which Obama often flips to first. “MEMORANDUM TO THE PRESIDENT,” read a sheet clipped to the folder. “Per your request, we have attached 10 pieces of unvetted correspondence addressed to you.”
Robert Draper on Obama, the writer.
How can any couple have a truly equal partnership when one member is president? Jodi Kantor paints a rich portrait in this New York Times Magazine cover story.
Who else sat around a computer and watched Obama’s race speech and felt like something big was about to happen? Seems apt to revisit it before he takes the stage tonight, especially if you are feeling hopeful.
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