Longreads Pick

Reporter Jason Horowitz helped reconstruct the events leading up to and including the shooting at the historic AME Emanuel church in Charleston, South Carolina for Sunday’s New York Times. Because the New York Times‘s coverage focused on the totality of the event, much of what Horowitz learned about Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney—the church’s pastor and a State Senator in Columbia—was not able to make to it into the piece, so Horowitz decided to publish an extended account of Rev. Pinckney’s last day in Matter.

Author: Jason Horowitz

Source: Matter

Published: Jun 21, 2015

Length: 7 minutes (1,800 words)

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Longreads

The candidate’s former prep school classmates recall a bullying incident that still troubles them to this day:

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

‘It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,’ said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was ‘terrified,’ he said. ‘What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.’

“Mitt Romney’s Prep School Classmates Recall Pranks, But Also Troubling Incidents.” — Jason Horowitz, Washington Post

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