To be in the backseat of a car, the cyanotype night on some minor highway, and pass at a distance of one or two hundred yards a rectangle of total green under pooled white lights is to see North American heaven. A community baseball field, a high school football field. A tennis court, occasionally. Say you’re a tennis-playing child from an oil town in Siberia where there are no courts, and no oranges, and in photographs of home it’s always snowing or sleeting or for another reason it’s gray. Around the age of 6, having first picked up a secondhand racket on the clay courts in Sochi, off the Black Sea, you arrive in Bradenton, Florida, home of Tropicana Products and IMG’s Bollettieri tennis academy. Will you ever get over it, the way the green lies shining against the dark? Maria did not. Maria Sharapova was, for a brief lambent time between 2004 and 2006, when she was 17 and 18 and 19, the best female tennis player on grass.
She was trained by Nick Bollettieri at the IMG Academy on mostly hard courts, to hone her technique absent variables. She moved on clay, she said later, jokingly, like “a cow on ice.” But on grass she was a dancer, a ballerina. One other body moves like hers, and it is that of the actual ballerina Sara Mearns, who shares with Maria a fissive mix of rigor and bounce. Some of Maria’s best serves in the middle 2000s are unbelievable when seen in slow motion. The extension of the right, working leg, reaching à la hauteur. The high toss followed by a hyperbolic swing of the racket, almost dismissive of the ball. Richard Williams, a former chief sportswriter for The Guardian who happens to share his name with the father and former coach of Venus and Serena, wrote that a poem about Maria “might start with a description of the moment when she tosses the ball up to serve and, as it reaches its apogee, a line through her left arm and right leg forms a perfect perpendicular.” Which is to say, the girl knew her angles.
Green clay and grass showed Maria to advantage in early photographs. The verdancy made wonder of her coloring, brought out the complementary flush of her cheeks, the gray-green in her cat’s eyes, the analogous streaks of gold in her long straight hair. She looked like a sixth Lisbon girl in Grosse Pointe, as if she’d been away at summer camp while the other five virgins were suiciding. She wore tank tops and little A-line skirts in white or pink or powder blue, obviously from Nike, and a simple gold-plated cross in the Orthodox style. No makeup. Quick-bitten nails. Goody-brand snap clips in her basic ponytail. Before each serve, she paused to brush back the newly escaped baby hairs with her ball hand, and the down on her forearm snagged the light. In 2003 she won no matches on the hard courts at the Australian Open nor on the clay at the French Open, but when she got to Wimbledon, to the grass, she beat the 11th-seeded Jelena Dokic and reached the fourth round, where she was beaten by fellow Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova. The tour made her Newcomer of the Year. A talk-show host began to compare her to Anna Kournikova, and she was ready, saying, “That’s so old.” Read more…
People take part in the March for Science in Portland, OR on April 22, 2017. (Alex Milan Tracy/ Sipa USA via AP)
Last Friday, I had the once-in-a-gosh-darn-lifetime opportunity to see Bill Nye—yes, the Science Guy himself—in a darkened auditorium of 1,200 people fist-pumping to his theme song and cheering for facts. He spent a significant chunk of the evening discussing climate change denial, the connection between climate change and terrorism, Donald Trump’s plan to slash funding for scientific organizations and initiatives, and the viability of Solutions Project.
“Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution makes reference to the progress of science and the useful arts,” Nye said. “It doesn’t say for the repression of science. It doesn’t say ignoring the facts discovered by the means of science.” He’s optimistic about our future and disturbed by what he call’s the United States’ “can’t-do attitude.” His number one piece of advice for advocating for climate change awareness? “Talk about it.” So that’s what I’m doing in this week’s reading list.
Author and activist Rebecca Solnit urges us to commit to love and hope, not despair, in spite of our terrifying present:
“You have to be willing to imagine a world in which we recognize that what we’re called upon to do is not necessarily to sacrifice; instead, it’s often to abandon what impoverishes and trivializes our lives: the frenzy to produce and consume in a landscape of insecurity about our individual and collective futures.”
Ten Gulfstream jets, outfitted with special engines that allow them to fly safely around the stratosphere at an altitude of 70,000 feet, take off from a runway near the Equator. Their cargo includes thousands of pounds of a chemical compound — liquid sulfur, let’s suppose—that can be sprayed as a gas from the aircraft. It is not a one-time event; the flights take place throughout the year, dispersing a load that amounts to 25,000 tons. If things go right, the gas converts to an aerosol of particles that remain aloft and scatter sunlight for two years. The payoff? A slowing of the earth’s warming—for as long as the Gulfstream flights continue.
Solar geoengineering used to be akin to fringe science, perceived as weird or dangerous. David Keith, head of Harvard University’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program, remains cautiously optimistic about the potential of this fascinating field.
David Goodrich, former Director of the United National Global Climate Observing System, is the author of A Hole in the Wind: A Climate Scientist’s Bicycle Journey Across the United States. This excerpt tracks Goodrich’s trek out West, observing increased wildfires, for which “climate change is the background music.”
“Fuck inclusivity. If people who have had their land stolen from them and people who were stolen from their lands are not considered key in the economic management of their own environments, then solutions to their specific climate struggles will not be effective; they won’t address the problems at their roots. And when it comes to disaster preparedness for Black and brown people in coastal regions, staying alive is a matter of knowing their roots.”
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice waits for remarks by President Bush after he attended a military briefing at the Pentagon Monday, May 10, 2004. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
For many women, the idea of ambition is complicated. Too often when we’re are described as ambitious, it’s hard to tell whether it’s a compliment or a criticism. Often, it’s an all-out accusation. For the essay collection Double Bind, editor Robin Romm tasked 24 women writers with considering their own relationships to ambition. Hawa Allan‘s essay “Becoming Meta” is a meditation on the mantra of I’ll show you that drove her to achieve—first as the only black student in her elementary school’s gifted and talented program, then as a law student, and finally as a law firm associate, hungry for the validation of the “rainmaker” partners whose ranks held no one that looked like her.
***
A noun is the proper denotation for a thing. I can say that I have things: for instance that I have a table, a house, a book, a car. The proper denotation for an activity, a process, is a verb: for instance I am, I love, I desire, I hate, etc. Yet ever more frequently an activity is expressed in terms of having; that is, a noun is used instead of a verb. But to express an activity by to have in connection with a noun is an erroneous use of language, because processes and activities cannot be possessed; they can only be experienced. —Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be?
I have been to a few Madonna concerts in my day, so I may or may not have been straining to get a view around the pillar planted in front of my discount seat when I beheld the superstar kick up into a forearm stand in the middle of the stage. For non-initiates, a “forearm stand” is a yoga pose wherein you balance your entire body on your forearms—lain parallel to one another on the ground, and perpendicular to your upper arms, torso, and legs, all of which are inverted skyward. Imagine turning your body into an “L.” And then imagine Madonna doing the same, except spotlighted before thousands of gaping fans in a large arena.
I hadn’t done any yoga at that point, so the irony of Madonna flaunting her ability in a discipline meant to induce inner awareness was totally lost on me. I just thought it was cool. Precisely, I interpreted Madonna’s forearm stand as a demonstration of power—power that was quiet yet fierce. An expression of power that I immediately decided I wanted to embody. So, not too long thereafter, I went ahead and enrolled in a series of free, introductory lessons at yoga studios across Manhattan and Brooklyn. My modus operandi: take advantage of the introductory classes and skip to another studio (once I no longer had a discounted pass). I was doing this, I told myself at the time, to test out different teachers—to find “the right fit.” In hindsight, I can see that this was just an excuse for being itinerant and cheap.
Spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn’t listened to S-Town. You can listen to the podcast on its website or on iTunes.
Pam Mandel: I finished S-Town about a week ago but I keep going back to replay the last two episodes because I feel like there’s something important in there I missed.
Sari Botton: I just finished it this morning and immediately called my husband to ask, “Did I miss something at the end?” I still have lots of questions. While I like that they didn’t artificially wrap it up, I kind of wish they would have acknowledged they weren’t going to.
Mark Armstrong: I should first admit I’m not a regular podcast listener, but I loved S-Town in a way that made me truly excited about the possibilities of audio documentary. There was an intimacy to it that I can’t imagine working as either a written magazine feature or filmed documentary. It was that intimacy that somehow still made the show deeply satisfying, even though NONE of my questions were answered at the end.
The Rikers Island jail complex, built on an island just off the borough of Queens in New York City, has been described as the world’s largest penal colony. It has seen its share of controversies, many of them involving issues of race. Rikers is no exception to the disproportionate and mass incarceration of Black and Latino people in the United States.
Over the past year, an independent commission, led by the former chief judge of New York, has studied the jail, and on April 2nd, it released its recommendation: shut down Rikers. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has also backed the recommended course of action, which aims to have the last inmate depart the jail within 10 years.
In place of Rikers, the plan proposes building smaller jails inside New York City’s boroughs to eventually house half its current number of inmates. At the heart of this proposal is the view that people who are sent to jail are from the community, not “other.” This view dictates that they should stay in the community during their jail term. That is, people who have been arrested or convicted should not be cast away on an island, out of sight, mind and empathy.
It’s an idea once espoused by the writer and activist Grace Paley in “Six Days: Some Rememberings,” the story of her time in prison, during which a fellow inmate tells her: “That was a good idea… to have a prison in your own neighborhood, so you could keep in touch, yelling out the window.” It’s also an idea in keeping with racial justice: Black and brown lives matter, and cannot be so easily discarded when they are seen.
In the following essay, originally published in March 2015 on The Butter, I explore these ideas by comparing Rikers to another racially charged penal colony that has already been closed down: Robben Island, off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. That island was once infamous for imprisoning Apartheid-era political prisoners (including Nelson Mandela), but is now a museum and tourist destination.
By commingling my journeys to both islands in this essay, I question what it means to banish our “unwanted,” whether because of crime, politics or disease, across the sea, far from the safety of our mainland. Is this impulse truly part of our nature? Using my experiences of these two places, I confront questions of nature, both of the land and of people, and how that nature collides with questions of race.Read more…
This month, Longreads turns eight years old. I’d like to thank everyone who has contributed to the site over the years — from the Longreads Members who fund our story budget, to my colleagues past and present at our parent company Automattic/WordPress.com, and to editor in chief Mike Dang and our growing team of editors, writers, and journalists who are producing outstanding essays and reporting every day.
I’ve often used these anniversary posts to look back, but we’re undergoing some big changes this year — not just publishing more original and exclusive stories, but also funding more serious reporting from around the world. It’s time to look ahead. Read more…
A seasonal "Statue of Liberty" waver for Liberty Tax walks down the streets of Janesville, Wisconsin. (Anthony Wahl / The Janesville Gazette via AP)
Today is Day 85 of the Trump Administration, and like a sailor condemned to four years at sea we carry on, stooped and weary from the weight of this albatross around our necks—Donald Trump’s taxes.
We know they exist—but what does their existence even mean any more? We’ve seen a few pages here and there, sent as proof of life to the New York Times and waved around by Rachel Maddow. In a bid to bring attention to President Trump’s noteworthy silence on his financial position, a tax march will take place on April 15 worldwide in response to a single tweet by a Vermont law professor.
Taxes are at once no one’s business and everyone’s business. We all pay them: how we pay them, what they are used for, what we want them to be used for, and what the government would rather do with them instead, is the Great American Story.
1. “Tax Time” (Jill Lepore, The New Yorker, November 2012)
Lepore takes the long view on taxes with a history of how the U.S. decided to levy an income tax. It’s easy to dismiss taxes, she argues, and much harder to defend them. But that’s not a problem our ancestors shared—despite opposition to King George’s levy on goods like tea, the founding fathers had no problem squeezing the rich with large indirect taxes for market exchanges such as imports. More than a century later, the constitutional amendment that made income tax the law of the land wasn’t even an issue in Congress. But taxes have since become a bone of endless contention, especially as they concern how much rich and poor should pay. Lepore weaves a deft story to tell us exactly why.
Taxes dominate domestic politics. They didn’t always. Since the nineteen-seventies, almost all of that talk has been about cuts, which ought to be surprising, because more than ninety per cent of Americans receive social or economic security benefits from the federal government. Americans, though, find it easier to see what they pay than what they get—not because they aren’t paying attention but because the case for taxation is so seldom made.
2. “Too Rich to Live?” (Laura Saunders and Mary Pilon, The Wall Street Journal, July 2010)
One of the most hotly contested forms of taxation is the estate tax, when a dead person’s estate is transferred to another person. Though the idea is thousands of years old and the American permutation has been around in some form or another for a century, the tax was gradually phased out starting in 2001. But when it came back in 2011—the product of impermanent legislation—the rich who stood to lose the most from the transfer of their substantial assets bucked.
It didn’t matter; the tax became permanent in 2013. But when Saunders and Pilon interviewed dying people and their potential heirs on the eve of the tax’s return, they found a strange phenomenon—people who make life-or-death decisions about their health and end-of-life care based on the potential of saving their heirs money on taxes.
In 2009, more than a few dying people struggled to live into 2010 in hopes of preserving assets for their heirs. Clara Laub, a widow who helped her husband build a Fresno, Calif., grape farm from 20 acres into more than 900 acres worth several million dollars, was diagnosed with advanced cancer in October, 2009. Her daughter Debbie Jacobsen, who helps run the farm, says her mother struggled to live past December and died on New Year’s morning: “She made my son promise to tell her the date and time every day, even if we wouldn’t,” Mrs. Jacobsen says.
In New York the lapsing tax spawned a major family conflict, according to one attorney. As a wealthy patriarch lay dying at the end of the year, it became clear that under the terms of the will his children would receive more if he died in 2010, while his wife (not the children’s mother) stood to benefit if he died in 2009. The wife then filed a “do not resuscitate” order and the children challenged it. The patriarch lived a few days into 2010, but his estate, like Mrs. Laub’s, remains unsettled given the legislative uncertainty.
3. “The Throwaways” (Melissa Chadburn, The Rumpus, January 2012)
Taxes are a matter of life and death not just to the wealthy, but to the people who need tax-funded social services to survive. Chadburn, who endured horrific abuse and a traumatic stint in foster care, considers what taxes mean to the people she calls “the throwaways,” those who depend on the small sums of money that anti-taxation advocates fight not to have to pay. As disparities between poor and rich grow, she argues, taxation can be seen as a revolutionary lifesaving act, a statement about the very worth of the people it helps.
Strangely, it was for dreams like these—the simplest dreams of rest, of feeling, of safety—that I first began to look at taxes. Taxes are the tool that makes these dreams of ours possible. Shelter for everyone, food for everyone, taxes ensure public safety. And what about love? Love is given and received. Love is not a solitary act. Love requires people to commune with one another.
My previous associations with taxes were shame and guilt and trickery. Then I looked at my history with money and public funding in general. Some people have argued that we are a nation of self-interested people. People who only care about themselves. Their own well-being.
I disagree. I think we are better than that but have been assaulted by the overwhelming personification of Greed….It’s our first lesson in pain.
Despite the stakes of taxation, the act of filing taxes can be unbearably mundane. But there’s a darker side to doing taxes—the poor pay a disproportionate amount to tax preparation firms that gouge them on relatively simple filings. Enter Joseph Bankman, a Stanford tax law professor who thought he’d figured out a simpler way. But as Planet Money reveals, simpler isn’t always better for those who benefit from the current, complex system. His fight for painless filing became a legislative battle—and his opponents were a strange coalition of their own.
While your average Joe struggles to pay the tax preparers, there’s a shadowy world of ultra-wealthy corporations and individuals who’ll do anything they can to not pay taxes at all. Last year, the lid on one of these complex tax-avoidance schemes blew open when 11.5 million documents—now known as the Panama Papers—were leaked, revealing inside information on over 200,000 offshore shell corporations that exist to help the one percent sidestep their tax obligations.
The Guardian won a Pulitzer for their groundbreaking investigation of the Panama Papers (Here’s a breakdown of how they got the scoop—and an in-depth podcast that tells the entire sordid story behind their award-winning investigation.) One of their most fascinating stories was about Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm that helped the rich find tax-friendly parking places for their cash. Harding tells the story of a company that’s part financial services provider, part peddler of international intrigue—one that’s marketed directly to Americans with money to hide.
Mossack Fonseca’s leaked emails reveal the extraordinary measures that some of its well-heeled clients took to keep their financial affairs secret. Especially the Europeans and Americans, who have latterly found themselves under scrutiny from their own governments.
One theme that emerges is anxiety. Wealthy individuals with “undeclared” offshore bank accounts are afraid they might get rumbled.
Another theme is victimhood. The super-rich, it appears, feel they are being unfairly picked on—persecuted even.
What happens when a tax evader is not an average citizen but the President of the United States? Of course, the answer is “we don’t know yet,” because we have no idea what’s in Donald Trump’s personal tax returns. Despite Rachel Maddow’s overhyped scoop on a few pages from Trump’s 2005 return, nobody’s been able to get ahold of what could be the most sought-after documents in modern history. And thus, we don’t know what wealth the President has to brag about—or hide.
After receiving several pages from Trump’s 1995 returns from an anonymous source, Barstow, Craig, Buettner, and Twohey hypothesized that back when he was a mere real estate mogul, the president used a $916 million business loss to cancel out his tax debt for decades. Is it true? Until Trump comes forward with his tax returns, there’s no way to know. But journalists won’t stop piecing the story together—and if the tax march is any indication, citizens won’t stop insisting that he tell the truth about his financial situation.
But the most important revelation from the 1995 tax documents is just how much Mr. Trump may have benefited from a tax provision that is particularly prized by America’s dynastic families, which, like the Trumps, hold their wealth inside byzantine networks of partnerships, limited liability companies and S corporations.
The provision, known as net operating loss, or N.O.L., allows a dizzying array of deductions, business expenses, real estate depreciation, losses from the sale of business assets and even operating losses to flow from the balance sheets of those partnerships, limited liability companies and S corporations onto the personal tax returns of men like Mr. Trump. In turn, those losses can be used to cancel out an equivalent amount of taxable income from, say, book royalties or branding deals.
At The New Yorker, Rebecca Mead profiles Margaret Atwood, Canada’s prolific queen of literature. Mead and Atwood cover the resonance of The Handmaid’s Tale in Donald Trump’s America, Atwood’s approach to feminism, and the purpose of fiction today. Beloved for her incisive mind along with her works, Atwood uses unlimited curiosity as her approach to a life well-lived—whether that’s tenting while birding in Panama, engaging with her 1.5 million Twitter followers, or writing as a septuagenarian. “I don’t think she judges anything in advance as being beneath her, or beyond her, or outside her realm of interest,” says her friend and collaborator, Naomi Alderman.
Atwood has long been Canada’s most famous writer, and current events have polished the oracular sheen of her reputation. With the election of an American President whose campaign trafficked openly in the deprecation of women—and who, on his first working day in office, signed an executive order withdrawing federal funds from overseas women’s-health organizations that offer abortion services—the novel that Atwood dedicated to Mary Webster has reappeared on best-seller lists. “The Handmaid’s Tale” is also about to be serialized on television, in an adaptation, starring Elisabeth Moss, that will stream on Hulu. The timing could not be more fortuitous, though many people may wish that it were less so. In a photograph taken the day after the Inauguration, at the Women’s March on Washington, a protester held a sign bearing a slogan that spoke to the moment: “MAKE MARGARET ATWOOD FICTION AGAIN.”
Given that her works are a mainstay of women’s-studies curricula, and that she is clearly committed to women’s rights, Atwood’s resistance to a straightforward association with feminism can come as a surprise. But this wariness reflects her bent toward precision, and a scientific sensibility that was ingrained from childhood: Atwood wants the terms defined before she will state her position. Her feminism assumes women’s rights to be human rights, and is born of having been raised with a presumption of absolute equality between the sexes. “My problem was not that people wanted me to wear frilly pink dresses—it was that I wanted to wear frilly pink dresses, and my mother, being as she was, didn’t see any reason for that,” she said. Atwood’s early years in the forest endowed her with a sense of self-determination, and with a critical distance on codes of femininity—an ability to see those codes as cultural practices worthy of investigation, not as necessary conditions to be accepted unthinkingly. This capacity for quizzical scrutiny underlies much of her fiction: not accepting the world as it is permits Atwood to imagine the world as it might be.
2017 Winner for Feature Photography.
(E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty Images)
The winners of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize were announced today — on the 170th birthday of Joseph Pulitzer — and though there were some surprises, the majority of the honors were bestowed on some of the year’s most talked about pieces of writing. For example, Colson Whitehead won for his ground-breaking work of fiction, The Underground Railroad. And C.J. Chivers of the New York Times snagged a Pulitzer for his heart-breaking portrayal of a soldier grappling with his life stateside in “The Fighter.”
The entire list of the other Pulitzer recipients can be found here, but below is a compendium of some of the celebrated works. Read more…
Enter an excerpt for your post. Excerpts should be under 160 characters long. If you don’t see the excerpt field in WP-Admin, you might need to manually display it via the checkbox in Screen Options at the top of the page.
Add a handful of relevant categories, such as “Quotes,” “Essays & Criticism,” and “Nonfiction.”
Add tags for additional keywords, plus the author and/or publication names as necessary. Add a maximum of 10-15 tags and categories total to ensure the post appears in the WordPress.com Reader.
Add a photo credit to images: In the WordPress media gallery, there is a “Caption” field. Add a photo credit naming the source and linking (using HTML) to the original. Example: Photo via <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/skynoir/11224284884">John Smith, Flickr</a>
For very short quotes, you can use a larger, bolder font by adding class=”short” to the blockquote. For example: <blockquote class="short">This is the quote</blockquote>
Stories / Exclusives / Excerpts
All of our original stories get the feature article treatment, with large photos and centered headlines/deks. These should all be assigned to the “Story” category. See examples here:
The dek is pulled from the “Excerpt” field in WordPress.
Example of a headline and dek on top of a Longreads Exclusive. The dek only appears like this for posts with the “story” or “top 5” categories.
Pullquotes
Add pullquotes to break up the text. They’re formatted like this:
<blockquote class="pullquote center">Here is a sentence copied from the story.</blockquote>
You can also change the alignment for pullquotes (replace the “center” class in the example with “right” or ”left”)
Example of a pullquote on Longreads.com.
Images & Videos
Add images or videos, depending on the story. You can embed most videos on other services (YouTube, Vimeo) by pasting the URL into the WordPress visual editor. To add more images, pick a spot in the story, then click “Add Media.” You can also center the image, or align it left/right.
Header Variations
Our original stories have four options for header treatment:
To choose one of these header variations, make a selection from the “Longreads Exclusive Options” panel in the WP Admin interface:
We don’t currently have any strict rules around when each header variation should be used. If you have an especially impactful featured image, give “Image Only” a try. If you have a vertically-oriented image, use “Dual Pane.” Give a couple of the layouts a try, and see which one looks better. Don’t hesitate to ask the group for feedback if you’re not sure.
The “Longreads Exclusive Options” panel also contains an experimental “Move the byline to the top” feature. This checkbox grabs the first paragraph (<p></p>) of the post and moves it up into the header. It’s a little finicky, so be sure to verify that it worked before you leave it checked.
Here’s an example of a byline that should work, if you’d like to copy and paste it:
If you try the checkbox, but it doesn’t work, give Kjell a ping and he should be able to help. A known issue for the byline feature is that it sometimes will create unfortunate line breaks for longer bylines. We’ll figure that out. 🙂
Quote Posts
A quote post is short and simple, but it’s a great way to distill “what we’re reading,” what we love, and why we love it. A quote post is a short blog post that features a link to a story or book along with a notable excerpt or quote.
It can be helpful to think of a quote and headline or angle that is different from the original story’s headline or angle. Often quote posts work well for surfacing a different story that’s buried deeper inside of a longer piece or inside a book.
Quote posts usually begin with a short introduction by you, followed by the quote. You can also do it the other way around: first quote, then context. The latter works best if the quote itself is short. If the excerpt is longer than a couple sentences, then it can be better to start with your own introduction, so people know why they should keep reading.
We usually don’t use more than 3-4 paragraphs to excerpt from the story. Quotes are meant to be quick, notable moments from a story. Exceptions can be made for books, since readers will be taken to a book purchase link rather than the full free story.
For direct quotes in the post, use <blockquote></blockquote> tags.
Every quote post should include a red button to “Read the story” “Read the interview” or (for Amazon links) “Get the book”. This is the code for that button: <a class="button-red">Read the story</a>
Interviews
Same as “Story” above but also include “Interviews” category and use bold text for interviewer questions.
All list items will be linked and wrapped in <h2></h2> tags. Include the title, and in parentheses, add the author, publication and year if not current.
2. Longreads Picks
Longreads Picks are stories that we recommend. Picks are shown to users in the feed on the right side of the homepage, and on our picks page: https://longreads.com/picks/
In technical terms, Picks are a custom post type (CPT) on Longreads. All that means is that they work a little differently than posts do.
Enter a title and a short description for your picks. You can see examples here.
Below the main content box, there’s a new box with some additional fields:
Click “Add Author” and start typing the name of the article’s author. This text box will auto-suggest matches from our database. If the author is brand new, you’ll need to visit this page, and add them manually first. Then go back to your pick, refresh the page, and try adding the author again. You can add multiple authors if necessary.
The Publisher box works the same way. If your pick is from a new Publisher, you can add them first from this page.
Enter the URL publsher date, and word count. No need to add tags or a featured image.
Hit publish or schedule the post when you’re ready.
3. Weekly Top 5 Email
The Longreads weekly newsletter goes out every Friday between 3pm-4pm ET. It’s manually built in MailChimp. Here is a brief checklist on preparing each week’s newsletter.
Once you have your Top 5 picks, create a draft blog post, titled “The Top 5 Longreads of the Week.” Use previous versions for formatting code.
In Mailchimp, under “Campaigns” in the top nav, create a new Campaign by going to a previous week’s “Longreads Weekly” campaign, and selecting “Replicate” from the dropdown menu.
Doublecheck that “Recipients” list is “Weekly Longreads Email” (You shouldn’t have to change anything.) Then click “Next”
Under “Setup” leave all settings the same but change the date under “Name your campaign”.
Skip the “Template” section and go straight to “Design” to make the following changes:
Click “Edit” on the “Longreads Weekly” section to change the email date and change any intro language or links if necessary. Click “Save and Close” when finished.
Click Edit on the Top 5 and story promos section. In this section you will update the Top 5 links and story links, along with their promo images and language.
Edit the post grid at the bottom. You can add, hide, or remove rows of stories using the buttons on the top left. Always add stories in groups of two — don’t leave one of the grid cells empty.
In the story grid, please make sure to crop the images to 1024px wide by 585px tall. You can do this within Mailchimp by choosing “Edit” when hovering over the image, then selecting “Edit” on the right. There’s a “Crop” tool in the Mailchimp image editor.
In the “Confirm” section, first select “Preview and Test” in the upper right menu and “Enter Preview Mode.” You will see desktop and mobile versions of the emails. This is also a good place to test all of the links. Be sure to check all the links for all the story picks, headlines, images, and “Read Now” buttons.
Close out of the window, and under “Preview and Test,” select “Send a Test Email” and send the email to yourself, Kjell, and at least one other Editor.
Check the email and links.
Before you send the email, be sure to FIRST publish the Top 5 Longreads blog post live, and check that your Top 5 link matches the live Top 5 blog post.
Under Confirm, double check that the email will go to the “Weekly Longreads Email list.”
Hit “Send” in the bottom right corner, and enjoy your weekend!
4. Image Specifications and Tips
Blog Posts and Exclusives
Images for blog posts should be at least 1456px wide. This allows for them to display at full retina resolution on desktop monitors. Landscape images tend to work best, but portrait images can be used from time to time as long as the minimum width is met. Featured images for exclusives are displayed larger than they are for regular blog posts. These images should be 2400px wide by 1400px tall. This is an image ratio of 12:7.
Emails
To keep load times down in emails, images should be no more than 1200px wide. You can resize to this width in Mailchimp. For images in the bottom grid, crop to 1024px wide by 585px tall.
Stock images
We usually use AP Images for our paid stock photos. Ping an automattician to purchase.
The following sources are great for finding Creative Commons photos. Be sure to include credit when necessary.
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