A great profile accomplishes the nearly impossible by making you feel like you truly know someone you’ve never met. It’s a feat of empathy and insight, the kind of alchemy that turns reporting into rapport. The five examples here span all manner of tone and subject, from victims of gun violence to digital charlatans, but […]
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Posted inAnnouncements, Reading List, Story, Writing
Celebrating 13 Years of Longreads
Ten favorite Longreads originals, as selected by the editors.
Posted inFeature
99 Problems: The Ice Cream Truck’s Surprising History
From crime panics to TikTok, summer’s favorite vehicle has driven a bumpy road.
Posted inFeature
Best of 2025: All Our Number Five Story Picks
Every story we selected for the number five slot in our weekly newsletter, in a handy digest.
Posted inCuration, Nonfiction, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Paula Lavigne and Tom Junod, Lex Pryor, Sarah Treleaven, Zack Graham, and Laura Jedeed.
Posted inEssays & Criticism
Poets in the Machine
Why does the literary world still hold online writing at arm’s length?
Posted inCuration, Nonfiction, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Josefa Velasquez, Wufei Yu, Tom Foster, Tim Requarth, and Ellen Ruppel Shell.
Posted inFeature
Who’s Afraid of Lorne Michaels?
Very rarely can we see an entire system reflected in one person. The creator and executive producer of “Saturday Night Live” is such a person.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Orange is the New Peach
“Southern winters have been getting warmer. Ten years ago, Joe Franklin started growing citrus on his farm in Statesboro, Georgia — a place where no one expected oranges to grow. Now, Franklin’s citrus groves teem with life and might actually help, in a very small way, to combat climate change.”
Posted inNonfiction
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.
