Hollywood studios are increasingly focusing on creating expensive action movies with less costly unknown actors. For some of these unknowns, it’s a chance to skyrocket into fame, but it’s not that easy: Hollywood has gotten creative in its hunt for the next big action star. Producers have considered scouting high-school football games. Brett Norensberg, an […]
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Posted inEditor's Pick
The Steroid Hunt
A brief history of how reporters first covered performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball, starting with the time Baseball Weekly writer Pete Williams hit the gym with Ken Caminiti: His post-workout high set him off to report on creatine, the supplement Baseball Weekly would dub the game’s “new gunpowder.” Baseball Weekly had a decent travel […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Tabloid Turncoat
On former News of the World editor Colin Myler, who was blamed by Rupert Murdoch for the phone-hacking scandal. He’s now taking on Rupert as editor of the New York Daily News, the tabloid rival of the Murdoch-owned New York Post: “The fun is going to be in competing against a man who first saved […]
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction
The Honey Hunters
The most lucrative of all the forest’s products, and the most dangerous to gather.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Making the Magazine: A Reading List
27 must-read stories on the making of the world’s greatest magazines.
Posted inBooks, First Chapters, Member Pick, Nonfiction
Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail
“There were a million heavenly things to see and a million spectacular ways to die.”
Posted inNonfiction
The Last Hand-Me-Down: Retracing My Brother’s Life Through His Clothes
Tom Molanphy | Loud Memories of a Quiet Life (OutPost 19) | May 2012 | 18 minutes (4,652 words) Tom Molanphy earned his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. He freelances for 10Best/Travel Media Group at USA Today and teaches creative writing, composition and journalism at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. This […]
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction
Swiping Right in the 1700s: The Evolution of Personal Ads
Noga Arikha | Lapham’s Quarterly | 2009 | 13 minutes (3,200 words) Download .mobi (Kindle) Download .epub (iBooks) I. In 1727, a lady named Helen Morrison placed a personal advertisement in the Manchester Weekly Journal. It was possibly the first time a newspaper was ever used for such a purpose. As it happens, Morrison was […]
Posted inReading List
Famous Cases of Journalistic Fraud: A Reading List
Washington Post Investigation of Janet Cooke’s Fabrications Bill Green | Washington Post Ombudsman | April 19, 1981 In 1980, Janet Cooke made up a story about an 8-year-old heroin addict, won the Pulitzer Prize for it, then, two days later, gave it back. Here’s the internal investigation of how the Post leaned on her to […]
Posted inUncategorized
Why Isn't Mike Vanderjagt Still Kicking In The NFL?
Why Isn’t Mike Vanderjagt Still Kicking In The NFL? Some might think the answer comes down to two phrases: “idiot kicker” and “liquored up.” These four words were famously uttered in one sentence at the Pro Bowl in 2003 by Colts quarterback Peyton Manning. You remember: Vanderjagt had gone on Canadian TV and said he […]
