A Reuters investigation into the Iranian supreme leader’s $95 billion economic empire—which was partly built on confiscating family property from ordinary citizens: Several other Iranians whose family properties were taken over by Setad described in interviews how men showed up and threatened to use violence if the owners didn’t leave the premises at once. One […]
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Posted inEditor's Pick
The Last Ride of Legendary Storm Chaser Tim Samaras
Storm chaser Tim Samaras catapulted to fame for his scientific research studying tornadoes. The story of Samaras, his storm crew, and the tornado he couldn’t outrun: “Samaras had an uncanny ability for finding twisters and for escaping them with his life. But the monster hiding in the rain that day was something he had never […]
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Longreads Guest Pick: Briana Bierschbach on 'Finding Molly: Drugs, Dancing, and Death'
Girl reporter for Politics in Minnesota. Mother of Dragons. It was a great week for longreads in America (see: Reuters’ ‘The Child Exchange’ investigation and Rolling Stone’s interactive story on hackers who will probably save the world), but one piece was passed around on my social media feeds more than any other: ‘Finding Molly: Drugs, […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Stay Out of Syria!
The writer takes a closer look at the headlines, and sees the same people making the same case about Syria that they did for Iraq: “On April 26, for example, a story by Mark Landler and Eric Schmitt was entitled ‘White House Says Syria Has Used Chemical Arms.’ The factual substance of the article was […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Future of Advertising
In the ad business, the relatively good life of 2007 is as remote as the whiskey highs of 1962. “Here we go again,” moans Andy Nibley, the former CEO of ad agency Marsteller who, over the past decade, has also been the CEO of the digital arms of both Reuters and Universal Music. “First the […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Tiananmen Story
It was so frustrating. It was early May, 1989 and I was in Tokyo reporting the financial markets for Reuters, fiddling around journalistically with the peak of the Japanese bubble economy. Meanwhile in China, cataclysmic events were unfolding and I wasn’t there. I really wanted to get back to see it and live it.
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The New Gawker Media
The New Gawker Media The problem with Gawker Media’s current model—and this is true of many other sites, too, including the Huffington Post—is that it’s based on pageviews and those tyrannical CPMs. It’s essentially a junk-mail direct marketing model, which Batty is very comfortable with: watch him talk about how Gawker Media has “massively scaled […]
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The Problem with the Red Cross
Why the Red Cross hasn’t been as effective as small community groups when it has come to disaster relief post-Sandy: The real problem with the Red Cross was not that it was stretched thin, but rather that it was simply too big, and its people too inexperienced in disaster recovery, to be able to respond […]
Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2013: Here Are All 49 of Our No. 1 Story Picks From This Year
Every single story that was chosen as No. 1 this year.
Posted inUncategorized
The New Gawker Media
The New Gawker Media The problem with Gawker Media’s current model—and this is true of many other sites, too, including the Huffington Post—is that it’s based on pageviews and those tyrannical CPMs. It’s essentially a junk-mail direct marketing model, which Batty is very comfortable with: watch him talk about how Gawker Media has “massively scaled […]
