Ross Andersen is a Senior Editor at Aeon Magazine. He has written extensively about science and philosophy for several publications, including The Atlantic and The Economist.
“Flinder Boyd’s piece about an aspirational streetballer and his cross-country trip to New York’s legendary Rucker Park had me from the very first word. The story is about basketball, a minor obsession of mine, but it’s also about poverty and the kinds of dreams it nurtures. Boyd gives us an unflinching portrait of his subject, an underskilled, overconfident young ballplayer from Sacramento without ever stripping him of his dignity as a human being. I read it twice, straight through.”
“It’s probably worth saying that there are editors at all sorts of magazines (myself included) who know they should never assign a story on a certain kind of subject—a Phish tour, say, or Mitt Romney, or what’s up with Cuba?—and yet they do so despite their better judgment. A writer tells you he or she is interested, you convince yourself that it’s all going to work out despite the pre-digested conclusions or the limited access or the fact that what you’re talking about is a generality rather than a specific idea. And it never, ever does, unless something remarkable and unexpected happens in the reporting or the writer brings some stunning originality to it. And these things work in a kind of horrible tandem—the lack of interesting subject matter inspiring the writer to scat out thicker and thicker layers of word jazz—resulting in so many bad magazine stories.”
“One thing was certain: neither Youssef nor Rashid, nor Anoush nor Shahla, were going to get to the place they believed they were going. Rashid would never be reunited with his wife and sons in some quaint Australian suburb; Youssef would never see his children ‘get a position’ there; Anoush would never become an Australian policeman; Shahla would never benefit from a secular, Western education. What they had to look forward to instead — after the perilous voyage, and after months, maybe years, locked up in an isolated detention center — was resettlement on the barren carcass of a defunct strip mine, more than 70 percent of which is uninhabitable (Nauru), or resettlement on a destitute and crime-ridden island nation known for its high rates of murder and sexual violence (Papua New Guinea).
“How do you tell that to someone who has severed himself utterly from his country, in order to reach another? It was impossible. They wouldn’t believe it.”
Jada Yuan’s profile of Mindy Kaling for New York magazine is almost a year old, but it has been a major influence on the way I write. It moves effortlessly from funny to sad, and it captures Kaling so well that it’s hard not read her quotes in her voice. But I think the story’s structure is the best part. The piece mentions a sign in Kaling’s room that reads: STAKES MOTIVATION TURNS ESCALATION, which she says are the four pillars for a great comedy story. If you read closely, I think you’ll notice how Yuan’s article follows a similar organization that shows Kaling’s model works well for great journalism, too.
“My big thing was I want you to do stupid in a smart way and smart in a stupid way.” Vice pioneers methods of marketing, advertising and reporting while trying to mesh investigative journalism with its party image.
Shirky talks about the nebulous definition of the journalist, the perilous combination of print and online news services, and the relationship between story and audience. Warning: somewhat jargon-y.
Media theory classes have found an unlikely home in the hearts of Christian college students and other evangelical, primarily Reformed Christians. (I should know—the epigraph of this piece is from my Media Ecology professor, to whom I credit my deep unease toward Google Glass.)
One of our favorite parts about running Longreads is getting to know all the excellent magazine, book and online publishers out there producing great storytelling. We thought it would be fun to profile them—starting today with Modern Farmer. We spoke with deputy editor Reyhan Harmanci about their inaugural issue, out now.
“The whole operation began when, a few years ago, Ann Marie was working for the New York Times and Monocle, and traveling a lot for stories. Living in upstate New York, she was surrounded by farmers, gardeners, people really connected to the food and the land; the fact that people everywhere were having the same conversations about food security, sustainability, localism, etc., surprised and inspired her. She began working on this in earnest about a year ago, and found an investor this fall. The editorial team (or part of it) began working in November.
“The basic idea behind MF is that knowing where your food comes from is extremely important — and, thanks in large part to climate change, so is self-reliance. We want to cover agriculture on a global scale, tell fascinating stories and also have fun. It doesn’t hurt that farms often have baby farm animals, key to any digital media operation.”
Tell us about the #longreads in the latest issue:
“Probably my favorite story in the magazine is by Jesse Hirsch (who has since come on as our staff writer) about the global wild pig explosion. It really needs to be read to be believed: boars are taking over the world and we can’t do anything to stop it. Less fun but extremely important is Mac McClelland’s story about humane slaughter—what does it even mean? How much should we care?”
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