Search Results for: Susan Dominus
Longreads Best of 2020: Writing on COVID-19

All through December, we’re featuring Longreads’ Best of 2020. This year, our editors featured many COVID-19 stories from across the web, and below, we’ve narrowed down 11 picks that really resonated with us. This roundup is focused on reported features; we initially included a few pandemic essays in this category, but those will instead appear in the upcoming Best of Essays list.
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How the Pandemic Defeated America (Ed Yong, The Atlantic)
The Atlantic‘s coverage of COVID-19 was exceptional this year, and Yong’s deep, thoughtful September feature lays it all out. How did the U.S. get here? Everything that went wrong was predictable and preventable, and despite all of its resources and scientific expertise, America’s leaders failed monumentally to control the virus at every turn.
The coronavirus found, exploited, and widened every inequity that the U.S. had to offer. Elderly people, already pushed to the fringes of society, were treated as acceptable losses. Women were more likely to lose jobs than men, and also shouldered extra burdens of child care and domestic work, while facing rising rates of domestic violence. In half of the states, people with dementia and intellectual disabilities faced policies that threatened to deny them access to lifesaving ventilators. Thousands of people endured months of COVID‑19 symptoms that resembled those of chronic postviral illnesses, only to be told that their devastating symptoms were in their head. Latinos were three times as likely to be infected as white people. Asian Americans faced racist abuse. Far from being a “great equalizer,” the pandemic fell unevenly upon the U.S., taking advantage of injustices that had been brewing throughout the nation’s history.
Inside the Nightmare Voyage of the Diamond Princess (Doug Bock Clark, GQ)
Another devastating read, “The Pariah Ship” by Michael Smith, Drake Bennett, and K. Oanh Haat, recounts the nightmare journey of Holland America’s MS Zaandam.
The pandemic has exposed the flaws of tourism, and cruise ships are a symbol of the disastrous effects that COVID-19 has had on the travel industry as a whole. Princess Cruises’ Diamond Princess, which departed on January 20 this year from Japan’s Port of Yokohama, was the first ship to suffer a major outbreak. Clark’s account of the voyage and subsequent quarantine of the ship’s 3,711 passengers and crew is riveting yet terrifying. He weaves stories of numerous people on board, from the more-privileged (a pair of traveling couples called the “Four Amigos”) to the overworked and underprotected (like security crewmember Sonali Thakkar). His reporting of the U.S. government’s response is superb, especially from the perspective of Dr. James Lawler, the infectious-disease expert called in to lead the evacuation of American passengers back to the U.S. We also get a glimpse of what the experience is like for the ship’s captain, Gennaro Arma, who was eventually the last person to disembark.
The Amigos, reduced now to three, along with the 325 other American evacuees, were still waiting on the buses. They had spent three hours idling on the pier and then, once they drove to the airport, sat on the tarmac for two more hours. Now, as the delay extended into a sixth hour, the passengers were nearing revolt. They were exhausted. And more problematically for the largely elderly passengers: The buses had no bathrooms.
Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., where it was still Sunday afternoon, the fate of the waylaid evacuees was being decided. Around the time the passengers were exiting the Diamond Princess, Japanese officials had blindsided their American counterparts with the news that some of the passengers boarding the buses had actually tested positive several days before. Soon many of the highest-level members of the Trump administration’s coronavirus response team, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, were arguing about what to do. Representatives from the CDC continued to fear spreading the virus. William Walters, the deputy chief medical officer for the State Department, wanted to bring everyone home anyway. Those urging the evacuation noted that the planes had been prepared with isolation units to contain the sick.
As the debate raged, the evacuees were demanding to be let off the buses, quarantine be damned, to find a bathroom. Carl was breathing so hard his masked breath fogged his glasses as he strained to control his bladder. Some seniors were crying. Finally, a few were allowed to relieve themselves in bottles beside the bus or were brought to a nearby terminal.
Longreads Best of 2017: Investigative Reporting on Sexual Misconduct

It was a year in which investigations loomed over us as we woke up each day and absorbed the news. Former FBI director Robert Mueller began investigating whether Donald Trump’s presidential campaign had any links to the Russian government and its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. The opioid crisis was covered by a few outlets wondering who, exactly, is profiting while countless people are dying. But it is the investigations into sexual misconduct perpetrated by powerful men across several industries that has had the most significant impact in 2017. And much of the reporting has been led by The New York Times. Read more…
Longreads Best of 2015: Crime Reporting
The best in crime reporting, with picks from Susan Dominus, Steve Kandell, Erika Hayasaki, Chris Vogel, and Brendan O’Connor.
Longreads Best of 2015: Crime Reporting

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in crime reporting.
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Chris Vogel
Articles Editor at Boston magazine.
The Great Cocaine Treasure Hunt (Daniel Riley, GQ)
This is easily one of my favorite stories of the year, regardless of genre. Sure it has buried treasure, 70 pounds of cocaine, and a questionable undercover sting in the Caribbean, but it’s also a tale about the power of story and good story telling. I’m pretty sure I emailed Riley’s opener to more people this year than any other, which starts like the seductive thrum of a GTO:
Good Goddamn, the way Julian told that story. It was the sort of story that imbued the mind with possibility. That lingered like campfire smoke in a sweater.
But it wasn’t just the particulars of the story—Julian burying the million-dollar stash of coral-white cocaine he’d found washed up on the beach in Culebra—that captured Rodney Hyden’s imagination. It was the sounds of the story—the slithering South Carolina accent, the whistly snicker at parts that weren’t funny to anyone but Julian. And the picture of the storyteller, too. The silver hair down around Julian’s shoulders, the big Gandalf beard distracting from his slight frame, the bare feet, and always that Mason jar of wine that kept bottoming out and filling right back up again.
I mean, c’mon. Read more…
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.
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Yes, All Women Part II: A Reading List of Stories Written By Women

My last Yes, All Women reading list was a hit with the Longreads community, so here’s part two. Enjoy 20 pieces by fantastic women writers.
1. “When You’re Unemployed.” (Jessica Goldstein, The Hairpin, June 2014)
“The first thing to go is the caring…You develop a routine: changing out of sleeping leggings and into daytime leggings.”
2. “No Country for Old Pervs.” (Molly Lambert, Blvrb, June 2014)
Dov Charney, Terry Richardson…and the Iraq War? The 2000s were rough.
3. “For Writers with Full-Time Jobs: On the Work/Other Work Balance.” (Megan Burbank, Luna Luna Mag, June 2014)
Seven helpful tips for living practically and creatively. I’m particularly fond of “use your commute.”
Reading List: Misunderstood

Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker.
Feeling misunderstood has been the bane of teen angst for millennia, fodder for pop-punk anthems, and the basis of existential crises. Here, four people delve into the facets of their lives that don’t jibe with the expectations of others—some with disturbing consequences.
1. “I Was A Suspected School Shooter.” (Gina Tron, Vice, January 2013)
In a a small town post-Columbine, Tron’s nonconformity makes her a target. She begins to embody what she is suspected to be.
2. “Why I Stay Closeted in Asia.” (Connor Ke Muo, Buzzfeed, October 2013)
Traveling home for the first time in years, Muo grapples with his parents’ extreme homophobia, cultural stigma, and his father’s reluctance to embrace him — literally.
3. “Hot Girl #2.” (Melissa Stetten, Aeon Magazine, October 2013)
“I like it when people ask if I’m a model, but I hate it when they ask: ‘What do you do?’ and I have to say: ‘I’m a model.’ That makes sense, right?”
4. “Daniel Radcliffe’s Next Trick is to Make Harry Potter Disappear.” (Susan Dominus, October 2013, New York Times)
Radcliffe claims one of the most iconic roles in recent film history, but being Harry Potter isn’t without its cost. Here, the reporter delves into Radcliffe’s upcoming roles (Allen Ginsberg!), his struggle with alcohol and his nuanced relationships with family, friends and fans.
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Photo via Vice
Longreads Best of 2012: Emma Carmichael

Emma Carmichael is the managing editor of Gawker. She lives in Brooklyn.
The Best Thing I Read About A Woman Who Got Blamed For Everything
The Woman Who Took the Fall for JPMorgan Chase, by Susan Dominus (New York Times Magazine)
I tend to steer clear of stories about finance because I assume they’ll either go over my head or bore me or maybe even disgust me. This one only disgusted me. I admire how patiently Susan Dominus reported and told Ina Drew’s saga. We never hear from Drew herself, and yet we’re still given as complete a portrait of her and her tenure at JP Morgan as was possible.
I’ve worked in environments with all men and found certain anecdotes that Dominus picked up to be incredibly relatable—even though the subject is one of the most powerful people in all of Wall Street. Consider:
One of the rare women to rise steadily into the management ranks on Wall Street, Drew stood out, sometimes awkwardly so, in a mostly male work environment. Havlicek recalls hearing her address a roomful of 200 male traders not long after Chemical merged with Manufacturers Hanover in 1991. “I didn’t plan any of this for my career,” she told the traders. “For God’s sake, I was captain of the twirling team in high school.” Her words were met with silence. “There were dozens of guys that were just cringing for her,” Havlicek says. “She didn’t fit their picture of what a senior trader should look like.” For Drew, there were a lot of moments like that: guys rolling their eyes, muttering under their breath about something she just said. “She never seemed to care,” Havlicek says. “She just kept doing what she was doing.”
In general I would say that my favorite unofficial genre of Longreads is the kind that when I finish I think, “that woman is a badass.”
The Best Thing I Read About Girls
The Loves of Lena Dunham, by Elaine Blair (New York Review of Books)
I read so many words about Lena Dunham’s HBO series this year that by the time I actually got to sit down and watch the series, I’d nearly lost track of how I would have watched it “on my own.” There was so much said about what Girls had gotten wrong that it became difficult, for me at least, to focus on what the show had gotten right. Then I read Elaine Blair’s breakdown of Dunham’s treatment of sex in the New York Review of Books and remembered: Oh, I can just watch Girls as a girl, and that is valuable, too. I appreciate criticism that puts you in your place.
The Best Thing I Read About Fiona Apple
I read Dan P. Lee on Fiona Apple three times before I’d even listened to Fiona Apple’s new album once. Even Fiona Apple, creative genius, can get stuck watching Mob Wives for four hours.
The Best Thing I Read About A Former Olympian
How A Career Ends: Nancy Hogshead-Makar, Olympic Swimming Gold Medalist, by Rob Trucks (Deadspin)
This was my favorite edition of Tell Me When It’s Over, a Deadspin series by Rob Trucks. It’s such a straightforward but brilliant idea: Trucks talks to former world-class athletes about “the moment they knew their playing days were over.” Nancy Hogshead-Makar, an Olympic gold medalist in swimming, talked a lot to Trucks about her career, but also about the sexual assault that defined the later half of her career, in plain language and detail that we don’t normally hear from rape victims. (Monika Korra deserves recognition for doing similarly this year.)
The Best Thing I Read About Guns And America
This is a very biased selection that I’m including anyway because I think everyone should read it. Kiese was my professor and friend at Vassar College. I’ve been reading his writing and learning from him for a while, and he is very much the reason that I pursued writing after college at all. His work gets at an honesty that I think all personal narrative should aspire to. In person and in his writing, he talks a lot about “reckoning”—facing ourselves fully and refusing to glance over our own weaknesses and fuck-ups. I admire that a lot.
I read this story on his blog, Cold Drank, and asked him if we could republish it on Gawker soon after. I think I’ve read it about once a month ever since. This piece hits you in the gut a few times and makes you want to be a better human being.
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