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The Time Jason Zengerle and a Gorilla Stalked Michael Moore for Might Magazine

Photo by Jimmy Hahn

Jason Zengerle | Might magazine | 1997 | 19 minutes (4,685 words)

 

Introduction

Thanks to our Longreads Members’ support, we tracked down a vintage story from Dave Eggers’s Might Magazine. It’s from Jason Zengerle, a correspondent for GQ and contributing editor for New York magazine who’s been featured on Longreads often in the past. Read more…

The Time Jason Zengerle and a Gorilla Stalked Michael Moore for Might Magazine

Longreads Pick

Thanks to our Longreads Members’ support, we tracked down a vintage story from Dave Eggers’s Might Magazine. It’s from Jason Zengerle, a staff writer for Politico and former contributing editor for New York magazine and GQ who’s been featured on Longreads often in the past.

Source: Might magazine
Published: Oct 2, 2013
Length: 18 minutes (4,685 words)

College Longreads Pick: 'Magazine Junkies,' by Nolan Feeney, Northwestern

Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick: 

For readers, summer travel offers a chance to discover a new bookstore or read a magazine you’ve never encountered before. This week’s College Longreads selection takes us to City Newsstand in Chicago, a magazine store that carries many titles you’ve heard of (The Economist) and several thousand you haven’t (RubberStampMadness). Nolan Feeney, a recent graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School, used City Newsstand as a backdrop for a bigger story about changes in the business of magazines. Feeney wrote this story for class last fall, and NewCity Lit, a digital supplement to the Chicago magazine, picked it up in the spring. Today, Feeney covers pop culture and Internet culture for Forbes.com.

Magazine Junkies: Print Thrives at City Newsstand

Nolan Feeney | NewCity Lit | March 2013 | 12 minutes (2,995 words)

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Professors and students: Share your favorite stories by tagging them with #college #longreads on Twitter, or email links to aileen@longreads.com.

Do you enjoy this service? You can support us by becoming a Longreads Member.

College Longreads Pick: ‘Magazine Junkies,’ by Nolan Feeney, Northwestern

Longreads Pick

Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. This week’s pick comes from Nolan Feeney of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jul 10, 2013

Our Longreads Member Pick: A Look Back at New York Woman Magazine

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This week a debate erupted about “serious journalism” in women’s magazines—and as part of this discussion, several magazine editors reflected fondly on the work of the late, great magazine New York Woman and its founding editor, Betsy Carter. New York Woman was published from 1986-1992; Carter went on to work for O, the Oprah Magazine and write books including Nothing to Fall Back On: The Life and Times of a Perpetual Optimist. She also just finished her fourth novel. 

We asked Carter to share a story from the New York Woman archives, and she chose “The Jogger D.A.,” by Victoria Balfour, from 1991. Carter explains: 

“It was the harrowing New York crime story of the late eighties and every woman’s nightmare: a twenty-nine-year old female investment banker brutally beaten, raped and left for dead in a remote area of Central Park. Eventually, five teenage boys from Harlem were found guilty and sent to jail. As a monthly magazine with a three month lead time on a story that was in the papers nearly every day, New York Woman decided to focus on ‘The Jogger D.A.,’ the prosecutor in the case, Liz Lederer, a young newcomer to the DA’s office.

“Now, twenty-two years later, the story has re-emerged with the discovery that the five young men were wrongfully convicted, and Liz Lederer has been vilified for coercing false confessions from those men. This piece revisits the hysteria that surrounded that crime, and the pressure on the woman in the DA’s office to get it solved. It’s also an example of how, at New York Woman, we tried to find our own take on a story of the moment, and how we gave it the kind of time and space it warranted.

“The goal of New York Woman was to speak to women of the city much as they would speak among themselves. We did investigative pieces, cartoons, reviews, fiction, humor—using the best writers in the city. No topic was off-limits. We tried to capture whatever was in the air and give it a unique spin that spoke to our readers.”

 
Thanks to Betsy and Victoria for sharing this story with Longreads Members.

Our Longreads Member Pick: A Look Back at New York Woman Magazine

Longreads Pick

This week a debate erupted about “serious journalism” in women’s magazines—and as part of this discussion, several magazine editors reflected fondly on the work of the late, great magazine New York Woman and its founding editor, Betsy Carter. New York Woman was published from 1986-1992; Carter went on to work for O, the Oprah Magazine and write books including Nothing to Fall Back On: The Life and Times of a Perpetual Optimist. She also just finished her fourth novel.

We asked Carter to share a story from the New York Woman archives, and she chose “The Jogger D.A.,” by Victoria Balfour, from 1991. Carter explains here.

Source: New York Woman
Published: Jun 21, 2013
Length: 15 minutes (3,856 words)

Reading List: 21 Outstanding Stories from Women's Magazines and Websites

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Are women’s magazines avoiding “serious journalism”? Guess it all depends on who’s deciding what’s serious.

The New Republic asks that question in a new article, and our biggest problem with this debate (and, to be honest, the term “longform journalism”) is that it can often run everything through a male-skewed filter of what counts as “serious journalism.” We’ve seen serious storytelling in both.

The other problem is that we’re still relying on National Magazine Awards and print-only publishers to reflect the zeitgeist. I’ve mentioned that 65% of all #longreads started out in print, but we also should spotlight the work of online publishers who are pursuing in-depth storytelling.

So, here’s a start: 21 stories from women’s magazines and sites that we’ve featured on Longreads. On Twitter, Rebecca Traister is curating some of her favorite serious work. And we’d love for you to add your favorite women’s magazine stories in the comments.

Allure

The F Word, Jennifer Weiner

Marie Claire

The Big Business of Breast Cancer, Lea Goldman

Tiger Beatdown

The Percentages: A Biography of Class, Sady Doyle

O, The Oprah Magazine

‘I Will Never Know Why’, Susan Klebold

‘We Thought the Sun Would Always Shine on Our Lives’, Paige Williams

Promises of an Unwed Father, Ta-Nehisi Coates

Is Ecstasy a Viable Treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?, Jessica Winter

Rookie

Higher Learning, Staff

XO Jane

How A Gun-loving West Texas Girl Learned to Fear Assault Weapons, Haley B. Elkins

It Happened To Me: My Parents Adopted a Murderer, Amity Bitzel

More

How I Lost $500,000 for Love, Aryn Kyle

Vogue

Notes on a Scandal: Jenny Sanford Vogue Interview, Rebecca Johnson

Sheryl Sandberg: What She Saw at the Revolution, Kevin Conley

Susan Rice: She’s Got Game, Jonathan Van Meter

Elle

I’m For Sale, Genevieve Smith

The Hairpin

My Brother, My Mother, and a Call Girl, Mara Cohen Marks

He’s So Unusual, Jane Marie

A Goodbye to Ambien in Dubai, Amy Schumer

The Evolution of Ape-Face Johnson, Carolita Johnson

Glamour

Relationship Violence: The Secret That Kills 4 Women a Day, Liz Brody

Jezebel

What Can a Civilian Possibly Say to a Wounded Soldier?, Chloe Angyal

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Share your picks in the comments

Reading List: 21 Outstanding Stories from Women’s Magazines and Websites

Longreads Pick

Are women’s magazines avoiding “serious journalism”? Guess it all depends on who’s deciding what’s serious.

The New Republic asks that question in a new article, and our biggest problem with this debate (and, to be honest, the term “longform journalism”) is that it can often run everything through a male-skewed filter of what counts as “serious journalism.” We’ve seen serious storytelling in both.

Author: Editors
Source: Longreads
Published: Jun 17, 2013
Length: 1 minutes (374 words)

Finalists for the 2013 National Magazine Awards

Longreads Pick

Congrats to the 2013 Ellies finalists

Published: Apr 1, 2013

Longreads Member Pick: Jason Zengerle's First Assignment for Might Magazine

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This week, we’re thrilled to feature Jason Zengerle, a contributing editor for New York magazine and GQ who has been featured on Longreads many times. Our Member Pick is Jason’s 1997 story on Michael Moore for Might magazine: “Is This Man the Last, Best Hope for Popular Liberalism in America? And, More Importantly, Does He Have a Sense of Humor?”

Jason explains:

This was the first story I wrote that could qualify as a long read—and it certainly wasn’t by choice. I’d just graduated from college and was doing an internship at The American Prospect, but I spent most of my time daydreaming about being an intern at The New Republic, which hadn’t seen fit to hire me. Hoping to change their mind, I’d routinely pitch TNR freelance stories, and one day I got the idea to write a takedown of Michael Moore: I sent in at a tightly-argued, perfect-for-TNR 1,000 words; TNR sent back its customary 20-word rejection. That would have been the end of it, but I showed the piece to my friend Todd Pruzan, who offered to show it to his friend Dave Eggers, who was then editing a little magazine called Might.

It turned out that Eggers didn’t share my dim opinion of Moore, but he did see the potential for a fun stunt. He said Might would be willing to take my 1,000 words arguing that Moore was a hack, if I’d be willing to embed them in a much longer shaggy-dog story of trying to track down and meet with Moore himself. By now, of course, the idea of pulling a Roger & Me on Michael Moore is pretty played-out, but at the time, I don’t think anyone had thought of it yet. And so on MLK Day weekend of 1997, I took a Peter Pan bus from Boston to New York, rented a gorilla suit for my unemployed actor friend Morgan Phillips, and set off on our little adventure.

The rest is history. By the end of that year, Might was out of business. Eggers was writing A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and on his way to becoming the voice of a generation. And I was an intern at TNR.

Read an excerpt here.

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Photo by Jimmy Hahn