Search Results for: sports

Longreads Best of 2015: Arts & Culture

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in arts and culture writing.

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Shannon Proudfoot
Senior writer with Sportsnet magazine

The Late, Great Stephen Colbert (Joel Lovell, GQ)

Stephen Colbert has pulled off the rare feat of being a public figure for the better part of a decade while keeping his true self almost entirely obscured behind a braying façade. Here, with such uncommon intelligence, sensitivity and nuance, Joel Lovell shows us who’s been under there the whole time. The writer is very present in the story, sifting through the meaning of what he finds and tugging us along behind him through reporting and writing that starts out rollicking and then turns surprisingly raw and emotional. But Lovell never gets in his own way or turns self-indulgent; that’s a tough thing to pull off. The word I kept coming back to in thinking about this story was “humane”—it just feels so complex and wise, and unexpectedly aching, buoyed with perfect, telling details and effortlessly excellent writing. Read more…

Longreads Best of 2015: Essays & Criticism

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in essays and criticism. Read more…

We Are All Compromised: The Access Game Isn’t Dead Yet

Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg, via Wikimedia Commons

John Herrman’s excellent Awl series on the anxious state of the media business (featured in our latest Top 5) should be required reading for anyone who creates or consumes content on the internet. His conclusions—advertising models are sputtering, no one wants to pay for news, Facebook dictates the entire tenor of conversation and its subject matter—do so much to explain why we are inundated by media but largely unsatisfied with what floats to the surface. Come for Herrman’s dystopian vision—a future in which professional journalism is suffocated to death—and stay for the animated robot GIFs. Read more…

The Art of Escape

Ryan Bradley | Kill Screen | December 2015 | 13 minutes (3,122 words)

Our latest Longreads Exclusive is a new essay from Ryan Bradley and Kill Screen, the videogame arts and culture magazine. Kill Screen is currently wrapping up a Kickstarter campaign to reinvent their print magazine, so donate here.

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No one wore stripes that spring and summer in Leavenworth. Stripes were for rule breakers, and no one was breaking the rules. “Baseball As A Corrective” read the front page of the New York Times that May. It was 1912 and “the magic of baseball” had “wrought a wonderful change in the United States Penitentiary.” For the first time in Leavenworth’s history, for months at a time, everyone behaved, because everyone wanted to play or watch the baseball games. “Chronic trouble makers began to be so good that the officials were startled,” the Times reported. Prison guards were planning more amusements for the winter, “such as vaudeville entertainments and moving picture shows, to keep the men on their good behavior.” Read more…

The Most Haunted Road in America

Greetings from Clinton Road, N.J.
Illustrations by Matt Lubchansky

Taffy Brodesser-Akner | Atlas Obscura | October 2015 | 20 minutes (4,944 words)

Atlas ObscuraOur latest Exclusive is a new story by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, co-funded by Longreads Members and published by Atlas Obscura.

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In a part of New Jersey where snakes slither slowly across a road, still coiled and yet somehow still moving; in a part of New Jersey where an insect that looks like a miniaturized bat sits on your windshield, menacing you while you make a sound that doesn’t sound quite like you from inside your car; in a part of New Jersey with a disproportionate amount of road kill in an already highly populated-by-road kill state; in a part of New Jersey where your phone cannot, will not pick up any kind of signal; here, in West Milford, in the county of Passaic, lies Clinton Road, a 10-mile stretch of haunted highway. Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
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How a Good Bookie Sets Odds

A good bookmaker will set up odds so they appear enticing to both sides of a bet: if Arsenal plays Stoke in the Premier League, the bookies want an equal amount of action on both clubs, the better to spread risk. (This isn’t how they make money, however. They do that by designing the odds so each bet results in a small percentage going to the house, called the vig or the juice.) If more money than expected goes in on Stoke as game time approaches, bookies will adjust the odds to make Stoke less attractive and Arsenal more so, ensuring things remain balanced.

Brian Blickenstaff writing for Vice about match fixing in the sports world.

Read the story

How to Catch a Match Fixer

Longreads Pick

An investigation into match fixing in the sports world, and the company trying to stop it.

Source: Vice Magazine
Published: Oct 22, 2015
Length: 17 minutes (4,400 words)

The Big Comeback of Benjamin Hochman

Longreads Pick

A narrative-driven, very human profile of a St. Louis sports columnist.

Published: Oct 16, 2015
Length: 27 minutes (6,863 words)

Advocating for the Bisexual Community: A Reading List

On September 21, Eliel Cruz tweeted, “If you’re an LGBT journalist and you don’t produce even one piece of content for #BiWeek you’re not an LGBT journalist.” Cruz’s words hit me in the chest. I am: a) a journalist who covers feminist & LGBTQ issues, and b) a journalist who interrogates her own orientation and gender identity regularly.

Bisexual Awareness Week (Sept. 21-28) and Bi Visibility Day (Sept. 23) provide solidarity and support for the bisexual community. I was embarrassed I didn’t know about these holidays until this year. Founded in 1999, Bi Week serves as a catalyst for discourse about biphobia and monosexism, bi erasure, mental and physical healthcare, public policy and more.

All week, I’ve watched my favorite websites and my Twitter feed fill with stories, advice and encouragement. Now, it’s my turn to contribute. I’ve collected some of my favorite pieces about bisexuality–personal essays, queer theory, history, and interviews.

1. “More People are Identifying as Bisexual–And That’s Great!” (Emily Zak, Bitch, September 2015)

Spoiler: This interview blew my mind. Bitch sits down with Shiri Eisner, the bisexual, genderqueer author of Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution. Eisner isn’t satisfied with merely overcoming stereotypes–she wants more for her community. Read more…