Jill Abramson left the New York Times’s executive editor position today and was replaced by Dean Baquet, the managing editor at the newspaper. At The New Yorker, Ken Auletta writes about what happened behind the scenes: As with any such upheaval, there’s a history behind it. Several weeks ago, I’m told, Abramson discovered that her […]
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Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Story
How to Fail in Business While Really, Really Trying: The True Story of J.C. Penney
Jennifer Reingold | Fortune | March 2014 | 29 minutes (7,108 words) Download as a .mobi ebook (Kindle) Download as an .epub ebook (iBooks) When you find a savior, you don’t quibble over details. So it was that J.C. Penney, the long-stagnating mid-tier department store chain, announced in June 2011 that it was hiring Ron […]
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The Blip: Was America’s Economic Prosperity Just a Historical Accident?
We’ve witnessed more than two centuries of unprecedented economic growth, powered by two industrial revolutions from the 1700s to today. Robert Gordon, a 72-year-old economist at Northwestern, argues that this incredible period of growth was all a fluke—and we are entering a new era where there’s no guarantee our children will be any better off […]
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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 […]
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Making the World’s Largest Airline Fly
An inside look at the operational challenges facing United and Continental as they merge—from the union negotiations to the choice of in-flight coffee: “On July 1 the new United introduced its new coffee. Fliers on the ‘legacy United’ fleet, accustomed to Starbucks, let out a collective yowl of protest. Pineau-Boddison had expected some resistance—Starbucks, after […]
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The Case Against Lance Armstrong
The FDA’s investigation, directed by agent Jeff Novitzky, is focused on whether Armstrong was involved in an organized doping operation as a member of the team sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), an independent agency of the federal government. In light of this criminal inquiry involving the greatest Tour de France rider of all […]
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Longreads Best of 2012: Emily M. Keeler
Emily M. Keeler is a writer and the founding editor of Little Brother Magazine. Best Pair of Essays on Loneliness Emily Cooke, “The Lonely Ones” – The New Inquiry Susan Sontag is a force that continues to be reckoned with, and the publication of her second volume of journals this year occasioned this incredible piece. […]
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How One Magazine Shaped Investigative Journalism in America
The following story comes recommended by Ben Marks, senior editor for Collectors Weekly: Doris Kearns Goodwin’s most recent history, The Bully Pulpit, chronicles the intertwined lives of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, often in excruciating detail, from Roosevelt’s struggles with the bosses of his Republican party to the fungal infections that plagued Taft’s groin. […]
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Officials at the Second Mile, the charity for at-risk children that Sandusky founded and that prosecutors say he used to target victims, reported that several years of the organization’s records were missing and had perhaps been stolen. The missing files, investigators worry, may limit their ability to determine if Sandusky used charity resources — expense […]
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GQ's Sean Fennessey: My Top Longreads of 2011
Sean Fennessey is the editor of GQ.com. (See more stories on his Longreads page.) I’ll try to follow a few guidelines for the sake of imagined objectivity, so, no friends; no GQ pieces; no pieces published before January 1, 2011; no stories pseudonymously submitted by my mom; no sandwiches. Here we go, with apologies, to, […]
