Search Results for: profile

Cyrus Vance Jr.’s ‘Moneyball’ Approach to Crime

Longreads Pick

A profile of the District Attorney of New York County and his data-driven approaches.

Author: Chip Brown
Published: Dec 2, 2014
Length: 22 minutes (5,712 words)

Five Stories About Addiction

Longreads Pick

Stories of drug addiction take many form; every story is different and intensely personal. This week, read an excerpt from a journalist’s memoir, a profile of a lead singer, a mother’s reflection and more.

Source: Longreads
Published: Dec 14, 2014

Five Stories About Addiction

Stories of drug addiction take many forms; every story is different and intensely personal. This week, read an excerpt from a journalist’s memoir, a profile of a lead singer, a mother’s reflection and more.

1. “My Rehab: Coming of Age in Purgatory.” (Kevin Heldman, The Big Roundtable, September 2013)

Naively, I expected a cut-and-dry story of teenage years spent in and out of rehab. Instead, I read about Kevin Heldman’s experiences in “therapy” centers that used disturbing, humiliating “treatments.” In spite of the staff’s best efforts, Heldman made friends—many whose futures were tainted by their time in the Therapeutic Community. Read more…

Confessions of a Mortician

Longreads Pick

A vivid profile of a sixth-generation funeral director.

Source: Matter
Published: Nov 30, 2014
Length: 23 minutes (5,942 words)

The Man Who Fell to Earth

Longreads Pick

A profile of wingsuit pilot Joby Ogwyn, who has climbed Earth’s highest summits and flown off of them. Ogwyn was set to climb and jump off Mount Everest for the Discovery Channel, but then tragedy stuck, killing most of his crew.

Source: Men’s Journal
Published: Dec 1, 2014
Length: 14 minutes (3,608 words)

Longreads Best of 2014: Here Are All of Our No. 1 Story Picks from This Year

All through December, we’ll be featuring Longreads’ Best of 2014. To get you ready, here’s a list of every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.

If you like these, you can sign up to receive our free weekly email every Friday. Read more…

Profiling the Difficult Subject: Our College Pick

Longreads Pick

Hau Chu’s profile of a nontraditional student at George Mason University.

Source: Longreads
Published: Nov 20, 2014

Profiling the Difficult Subject: Our College Pick

Journalists select profile subjects for any number of reasons. The person could be famous or newsworthy or simply serve as the face of a big, complex issue. Other times, they are just characters the community at large should know about. Those are the hardest ones to write because the writer has to hang the story on the individual instead of a news event or issue. And if the subject is not immediately likable, the writer has to work even harder to find the reader a way into the story. In his profile of a nontraditional student at George Mason University, writer Hau Chu does not try to make his subject, Ray Niederhausen, sound like anything other than he is: a 37-year-old undergraduate working to overcome a lifetime of addiction and bad choices.

A Second Chance at Life

Hau Chu | Fourth Estate | 13 minutes (3,184 words)

Mike Nichols: 1931-2014

Photo via Wikipedia

Mike Nichols, the beloved director of stage and screen—from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate, to Barefoot in the Park and Working Girldied Nov. 19, 2014 at the age of 83. Here are four pieces on the life of the artist. Read more…

1964: A Sidelong View of Sports

Below is a guest reading list from Daniel A. Gross, a journalist and public radio producer who lives in Boston.

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Fifty years ago, a champion boxer picked up his son from school, a literary critic was tackled by NFL players, and a famed NASCAR racer tended to his chicken farm. Such was the sidelong view of sports presented by Gay Talese, George Plimpton, and Tom Wolfe. Sports in the 1960s proved a rich arena for writers looking to flex their literary muscle, and Talese and Wolfe tried out unconventional sports writing while still kicking off their careers. You won’t find much reference here to the sweeping political developments that tend to dominate our narratives of 1964. Instead, you’ll get some sense for the texture of the time. Read more…