Search Results for: Washington Post

The Good Girls Revolt

Lynn Povich | The Good Girls Revolt, Public Affairs | 2012 | 14 minutes (3,368 words)

 

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“Editors File Story; Girls File Complaint”

On March 16, 1970, Newsweek magazine hit the newsstands with a cover story on the fledgling feminist movement titled “Women in Revolt.” The bright yellow cover pictured a naked woman in red silhouette, her head thrown back, provocatively thrusting her fist through a broken blue female-sex symbol. As the first copies went on sale that Monday morning, forty-six female employees of Newsweek announced that we, too, were in revolt. We had just filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charging that we had been “systematically discriminated against in both hiring and promotion and forced to assume a subsidiary role” simply because we were women. It was the first time women in the media had sued on the grounds of sex discrimination and the story, irresistibly timed to the Newsweek cover, was picked up around the world:

• “‘Discriminate,’ le redattrici di Newsweek?” (La Stampa) “Newsweek’s Sex Revolt” (London Times)
• “Editors File Story; Girls File Complaint” (Newsday)
• “Women Get Set for Battle” (London Daily Express)
• “As Newsweek Says, Women Are in Revolt, Even on Newsweek” (New York Times)

The story in the New York Daily News, titled “Newshens Sue Newsweek for ‘Equal Rights,’” began, “Forty-six women on the staff of Newsweek magazine, most of them young and most of them pretty, announced today they were suing the magazine.”

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The Story of a Journalist Turned Wedding Photographer

Just the other day, I received an e-mail from a photographer looking for an internship. His short note almost brought me to tears: “I come from Sarajevo, Bosnia, and my life has put me though many challenges. I am saying this because I have had the chance to see the worst in humans and was lucky enough to survive it. Since then, I have made it my goal to help people record their happiest moments, because those moments are rare and precious, and one never has too many of them.”

Matt Mendelsohn, in the Washington Post (2007), on switching careers from photojournalist to wedding photographer. Read more on weddings from the Longreads Archive.

Photo: Dmitri Markine

The Supreme Court Nominee, The Video Store, and the Changing Face of Consumer Privacy

Potomac Video, the last remaining video rental store in Washington D.C., will be shutting its doors after 33 years in business. Though there are surely plenty of good stories to be found in the some 60,000 DVDs now on sale at Potomac, perhaps the most interesting story is the role the Washington institution played in consumer privacy laws, specifically in terms of the creation of the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA). From the Washington Post:

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork, then a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to the Supreme Court. Bork was a pretty controversial fellow — he had ties to the Watergate scandal and faced an aggressive wave of criticism from Democrats in the Senate.

But it was Bork’s position on privacy that caused Michael Dolan, who was then a writer with the Washington City Paper, to start looking into his video rental records. You see, Bork was a strict constitutionalist and generally did not believe that individuals were guaranteed privacy protections beyond those specifically outlined in legislation.

So one day, Dolan walked into Potomac Video and asked the manager on duty whether he could have a peek at Bork’s rental history — something that no specific legislation at the time barred. He walked out with a photocopy revealing the 146 tapes the judge had checked out in the past two years.

Other than the sheer number of tapes, Dolan didn’t uncover anything too shocking. (Bork appears to have had a special taste for Hitchcock and costume dramas.) But Dolan’s acidic prose and the fact that he was able to get the records at all became a huge story, prompting Congress to pass the VPPA in 1988 — after Bork’s nomination had been voted down 58 to 42.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Read the story here.

The 2014 Pulitzer Prize Winners: A Reading List

Longreads Pick

Story picks from this year’s winners, including The Washington Post, Colorado Springs Gazette and more.

Author: Editors
Source: Longreads
Published: Apr 14, 2014

The 2014 Pulitzer Prize Winners

This year’s Pulitzer Prize winners are outThe Washington Post and The Guardian shared a Pulitzer for public service for their reporting on the Edward Snowden leaks and widespread NSA surveillance, the Boston Globe was honored for its coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing, Chris Hamby of the Center for Public Integrity won for his black lung investigation, and Will Hobson and Michael LaForgia received a Pulitzer for the Tampa Bay Times’ investigation of a homeless housing program. Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle and Readmill users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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On The Benefits of “Leaning Out”

Soon, the rewards of leaning in doubled.

Then they quadrupled. Then they began to increase exponentially.

I leaned in some more. I ate protein bars and made important telephone calls during my morning commute. I stopped reading novels so I could write more articles and memos and make more handicrafts to contribute to the school auction. I put in extra hours at work. When I came home, I did radio interviews over Skype from my living room while supervising the children’s math homework.

And I realized that I hated Sheryl Sandberg.

Because, of course, I was miserable. I never saw my friends, because I was too busy building my network. I was too tired to do any creative, outside-the-box thinking. I was boxed in. I wondered if foreign-policy punditry was just too much for me. I wondered if I should move to Santa Fe and open a small gallery specializing in handicrafts made from recycled tires. I wondered if my husband and kids would want to go with me.

—Rosa Brooks, The Washington Post.  Brooks’ piece looks at what happens when a woman takes Sheryl Sandberg’s advice and leans in (spoiler: good things at work and exhaustion at home). She posits that maybe the answer lies in a different kind of feminism manifesto, a “Manifestus for the Rest of Us,” wherein women fight for the right to “lean out,” relax a little, and maybe even find time “for the kind of unstructured, creative thinking so critical to any kind of success.”

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Taking Care of Business: A Reading List

Hackers! Gen Y CEOs! Multibillion dollar success stories! International expansion! Top-secret projects! Cute clothes! Hamburgers! Capitalism is so exciting, and so are these longreads about popular U.S. companies.

1. “In-N-Out’s Burger Queen.” (Patrick J. Kiger, Orange Coast, Jan. 2014)

31-year-old Lynsi Snyder presides over In-N-Out’s $1.1 billion industry, founded by her grandparents in the 1940s. What’s the company secret? Never change. Seem counterintuitive? Not if you’ve ever had an In-N-Out burger.

2. “You Can Explain eBay’s $50 Billion Turnaround With Just This One Crazy Story.” (Nicholas Carlson, Business Insider, Feb. 2014)

A group of six twenty-somethings fly to Sydney, Australia on a secret mission for eBay. Carlson brings the eBay executives and employees to life; I felt like I was watching “The Social Network.”

3. “A Sneaky Path Into Target Customers’ Wallets.” (Elizabeth A. Harris, Nicole Perlroth, Nathaniel Popper and Hilary Stout, Washington Post, Jan. 2014)

Merry Christmas, you’ve been hacked! In the midst of the 2013 holiday season, millions of Target customers received an ominous email; Cybercriminals targeted the store’s credit card machines, stole card numbers and PINs and endeavored to sell the information in the creepy corners of the internet.

4. “The J. Crew Invasion.” (Emma Rosenblum, Bloomberg Businessweek, Nov. 2013)

J. Crew executives hope the brand’s casual-chic niche will find a foothold in London.

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Photo: Kevin Dooley

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What Peyton Manning Learned from His Older Brother Cooper

But it was Manning’s older brother Cooper who put his neck injury in the proper context and cured him of any self-pity. Cooper had been an athlete equal to anyone in the family, an all-state wide receiver with a scholarship to Ole Miss, when he began experiencing numbness and atrophy in his right bicep. The Mannings flew to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where tests showed dangerous degeneration in his spine. He underwent surgery to relieve the pressure on his spinal cord, and complications set in. After weeks in a wheelchair, he had to walk with a cane. All of which Manning had witnessed up close, even as his own development was climaxing.

“I’ve never taken it for granted, ever since Cooper’s career was taken from him just like that,” Manning says. “So I always had it in perspective, and I didn’t need a year off to remind me how lucky I was to play.”

He and Cooper talked, comparing their conditions — but in truth, Manning realized, there was no comparison. He had gotten a career, and Cooper hadn’t. “Maybe this was my not-picture-perfect-neck catching up with me finally,” Manning says. “I just thought, wow, I got almost 20 years out of this neck. Boy, I’m grateful for the time I’ve had.”

Sally Jenkins, in the Washington Post, on the Denver Broncos quarterback. Read more on the Super Bowl in the Longreads Archive.

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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On the Far Side of the Fire: Life, Death and Witchcraft in the Niger Delta

Child Rights and Rehabilitation Center, Eket, Nigeria

Jessica Wilbanks | Ninth Letter | Fall/Winter 2013 | 27 minutes (6,860 words)

 

Download as a .mobi ebook (Kindle)

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One of our previous Longreads Member Picks, an essay by Jessica Wilbanks, is now free for everyone. “On The Far Side of the Fire” first appeared in Ninth Letter and was awarded the  journal’s annual creative nonfiction award. This is the first time it has been published online.

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