Posted inEditor's Pick

Prison Rape: Obama’s Program to Stop It

It is “a national disgrace”: The U.S. prison system, for years, failed to stop rampant sexual abuse from occurring behind bars. Inside the new program to stop it: “The review panel’s most recent report describes the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women, a maximum-security state prison in Troy, Virginia. About 1,200 women are confined there, and […]

Posted inEditor's Pick

Inside the Obama Campaign’s Hard Drive

Harper Reed went from running a T-shirt community to running digital operations for Obama’s reelection campaign. Inside the team’s top-secret efforts to refine voter targeting to a granular (or: “creepy”) level: “By the 2000 election, political data firms like Aristotle had begun purchasing consumer data in bulk from companies like Acxiom. Now campaigns didn’t just […]

Posted inEditor's Pick

Obama’s Way

Lewis follows the president for six months—joining him for basketball pickup games, a trip on Air Force One, and inside a decision on how to handle Libya: “Before big meetings the president is given a kind of road map, a list of who will be at the meeting and what they might be called on […]

Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Story

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

Jessica Wilbanks | Ninth Letter | Fall/Winter 2013 | 27 minutes (6,860 words) Download as a .mobi ebook (Kindle) Download as an .epub ebook (iBooks) 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 […]

Posted inUncategorized

Harper Reed went from running a T-shirt community to running digital operations for Obama’s reelection campaign. Inside the team’s top-secret efforts to refine voter targeting to a granular (or: “creepy”) level: By the 2000 election, political data firms like Aristotle had begun purchasing consumer data in bulk from companies like Acxiom. Now campaigns didn’t just […]

Posted inUncategorized

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oLjAfGD39U Coming Tuesday on PBS: “Inside Obama’s Presidency.” We’ve teamed up with Frontline for a #longreads list of stories from Obama’s first term. Get the list here.  (Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

Posted inEditor's Pick

Come On, Feel the Buzz

A critical look at the political newspaper and website Politico: “One classic method of unleashing irresistible Drudge bait on the Internet is to boil another outlet’s story down to a couple salacious-sounding excerpts, or (failing an effective condensing strategy) to simply reinterpret the material to fit a Drudge-friendly narrative. This past May, for example, Vanity […]

Gift this article