Search Results for: Grantland

The Secret to Every Episode of 'Maury,' in Three Acts

“Producers think of every Maury segment as a three-act play. Tiffany’s suspicions were the subject of Act I. ‘We haven’t had sex in over a month,’ she complained. Harrison-Hall turned to us with her mouth open and we yelled, ‘Ohhhhh!’ Tiffany’s neighbor, Candice, rose from the front row to say she’d seen women entering Cornelius’s studio at night. We applauded.

“After a time, Tiffany’s boyfriend, Cornelius, appeared from backstage. This was Act II. Cornelius wore the expression of a lot of Maury men — guilty but defiant. He found himself confronted not only by Tiffany but by Maury’s in-house private investigator, Wendy Kleinknecht. Kleinknecht is a tall blonde who looks like Erin Brockovich. She had taped Cornelius with another woman — the decoy. We watched Cornelius ask the decoy, ‘You want to get fucked tonight?’

“This was fun but it could have aired 20 years ago. We’ve seen a thousand talk shows with a thousand Tiffanys and Corneliuses. It’s in Act III that Maury shows how it has mastered the 21st century. What Act III of every Maury segment requires now is a denouement. Reality shows call this moment the ‘reveal’; Maury producers call it ‘truth.’”

Bryan Curtis and Grantland go behind the scenes of Maury Povich’s daytime show. Read more on TV from the Longreads Archive.

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Photo: mauryshow.com

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Longreads Guest Pick: Valerie Vande Panne on Anna Clark and Detroit

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Valerie Vande Panne is an independent journalist covering life and human interests. This week, she chose a series of articles to help give readers a better understanding of Detroit.

“As a journalist, I am often asked, ‘How do you cut through the noise?’ In other words, how do I sift through the thousands upon thousands of bits of information, ‘facts,’ media outlets, and organizations vying and manipulating to get my attention? One tool I rely on is credible sources—actual human beings, experts of any given field. It starts with curiosity: I read their work; I question everything.

“In the case of Detroit, there is one writer I turn to for understanding again and again—a woman who is so prolific, your heart beats with her words as you read, and you miss Detroit as if the city is a long lost lover who has broken your heart—though, perhaps, you’ve never even felt the Motor City’s aching concrete beneath your feet. 

“Anna Clark’s words are gems of Detroit and offered to you with grace, so you too may intimately know this American city and her people.  

“There’s been a lot of loud noise about Detroit these last few weeks, much of it from people who have never spent a moment breathing her air, and do not hold Detroit in their heart—how can one say what a place is, or what she needs, or what her people must do, when there is such a fundamental and profound disconnect?

“If you care to read anything about Detroit, I humbly suggest you make it one of, if not all three of these wordsmithed pieces of truth. Take them in, let them seep into you, and if it pleases you, lift Detroit with your spirit.”

• “Ty Cobb as Detroit.” (Grantland, July 22, 2011)

“Mapping Motown.” (Architect Magazine, November 27, 2012)

“Can Urban Planning Rescue Detroit?” (NextCity, July 1, 2013, Subscription Required)

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Longreads Guest Pick: Julie Kliegman on 'Owning The Middle'

Julie Kliegman is a senior studying journalism and Spanish at Northwestern University. Come July, she’s headed to St. Petersburg to work for PolitiFact. She loves to travel, and has lived abroad for short stints in Nicaragua and Puerto Rico.

“This week I enjoyed reading ‘Owning the Middle,’ an ESPN story about WNBA star Brittney Griner. If their sleek online feature design (see: ‘Out in the Great Alone’) isn’t enough to woo you, Kate Fagan paints a compelling picture of life as a black, lesbian athlete. Griner developed a thick skin during childhood and her time at Baylor that now helps her deflect the bullies Fagan refers to as her ‘troll chorus.’ Reading this will make you want to be as badass as Griner—the proud owner of many tattoos and two snakes.”

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What are you reading (and loving)? Tell us.

“Career Arc: Harrison Ford.” Alex Pappademas, Grantland.

“The End and Don King.” Jay Caspian Kang, Grantland.

Longreads Best of 2012: Michael Kruse

Longreads Pick

Michael Kruse, an award-winning staff writer at the Tampa Bay Times who also contributes to ESPN’s Grantland, this year gave a  TEDx talk and had a story make the anthology Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists.

Read more guest picks from Longreads Best of 2012.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jan 2, 2013

Longreads Best of 2012: Michael Kruse

Michael Kruse, an award-winning staff writer at the Tampa Bay Times who also contributes to ESPN’s Grantland, this year gave a TEDx talk and had a story make the anthology Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists.  

1. Chris Jones on the animals in Ohio. What a way to start: The horses knew first. And want to know how to make people keep reading? End paragraphs and sections with sentences like this: He saw what was unmistakably a bear, giving chase. And: Then Kopchak saw the lion. And: Next she called 911. And: … and they knew that they didn’t have enough time or tranquilizers to stop what was coming.

2. Michael Mooney’s Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever. Because of the question. Will he or won’t he? I had to know. But also because Mooney made me care about Bill Fong. He could’ve taken me anywhere. I would’ve read forever. And because come on—who doesn’t love a well-told tale with a twist at the end?

3. Kelley Benham’s Never Let Go. Granted, Kelley’s cubicle’s not too far from my cubicle, so maybe I’m not too impartial, but I feel like this is a fact: This story is one of the best things that ran in a newspaper in America in the last 12 months. Three parts. One miracle. Life.

4. Caballo Blanco’s Last Run by Barry Bearak. Classic quest story. Looking for True. Also, in print, it was beautifully designed. Which matters.

5. Patrick Radden Keefe’s Cocaine Incorporated. Details. Details like the ghostwriter composing letters to the mistress. Like the dope-stuffed submersibles floating down the Amazon. The Sinaloa pot farm … on U.S. National Forest land … in the remote North Woods of Wisconsin … surrounded by Mexican farmers with AK-47’s. The catapult! The chili-pepper business! The air-conditioned tunnels with trolley lines! Surprises are such intoxicants. Oh, and this sentence: In the trippy semiotics of the drug war, the cops dress like bandits, and the bandits dress like cops.

Read more guest picks from Longreads Best of 2012.

Longreads Best of 2012: Jamie Mottram

Jamie Mottram is the Director of Content Development for USA Today Sports Media Group and a proud supporter of Longreads.

I work in sports media and read and think about sports A LOT. So the task of boiling the year in sportswriting down to some kind of best-of list is daunting indeed, and I won’t do it. Nor am I going to name my favorite sportswriter or piece of sportswriting in general, because I’m sure to overlook someone or something and probably offend my employer (USA Today Sports Media Group!), and I’m unwilling to do that.

But I will tell you my favorite athlete in 2012 was Robert Griffin III, who is suddenly playing quarterback at an extraterrestrial level for my favorite team, the Redskins. Of all the words spilled over RGIII’s emergence, none struck a chord in me like those in Charles P. Pierce’s piece for Grantland, “The Head and the Heart.” It touches on the phenomenon of this young athlete, the burden of great expectations met by even greater talent and the horrific brain injures caused by pro football. The last line will linger for a long, long time.

My favorite team in 2012 was the Orioles. The longtime doormat of Major League Baseball’s AL East, they somehow pieced together a playoff run for the ages, banding together like grown-up Bad News Bears before falling to the mighty Yankees in October. Before all of that, though, Tom Scocca wrote “‘Motherfuckin’ Shit! Take Your Ass Home!’ Or, Why the Baltimore Orioles Matter” for Deadspin, predicting it all, sort of. I thought then that it was a beautiful sentiment wonderfully expressed but also kind of sad to hold out for a team so hopeless. I was wrong, though, because anything can happen, and eventually does.

Read more guest picks from Longreads Best of 2012.

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week—featuring New York magazine, Gawker, Virginia Hughes, Grantland, Michigan Quarterly Review, fiction from The New Yorker and a guest pick by Jeremy Kressmann. 

Top 5 Longreads of the Week: Financial Times, Grantland, Rany Jazayerli, The Baffler Magazine, The New Yorker, fiction from The Guardian, and a guest pick from Mark Berman.