Journalism, like everything else, has its trends. From celebrity guest editors to abundant Upworthian headlines, there’s a lot of replication in our business. So it was with low expectations that I began to read “Baltimore’s Forgotten Champions,” an oral history of a Canadian Football League team by a group of University of Maryland students. Most […]
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Posted inCollege, Nonfiction
How to Do Oral History the Right Way: Remembering the Baltimore Stallions, Our College Pick
Journalism, like everything else, has its trends. From celebrity guest editors to abundant Upworthian headlines, there’s a lot of replication in our business. So it was with low expectations that I began to read “Baltimore’s Forgotten Champions,” an oral history of a Canadian Football League team by a group of University of Maryland students. Most […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How to Remain Happy While the Entire World Is Tracking You
The question that I’m asking myself is, when are we going to stop sharing, and how far are we going to go to allow ourselves to monitor and surveil each other in kind of a coveillance? I believe that there’s no end to how much we can track each other—how far we’re going to self-track, […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Julian Barnes on Confidence and Calling Yourself a Writer
INTERVIEWER So you chose novel writing as a profession. BARNES Oh, I didn’t choose it as a profession—I didn’t have the vanity to choose it. I can perhaps now state that I am at last a novelist, and think of myself as a novelist, and can afford to do journalism when it pleases me. But […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Happens When Ronan Farrow Interviews Miley Cyrus
Beyond music, Cyrus is expanding her interests. After her breakup, she tells me, she asked Diane Martel, the director responsible for Cyrus’s “We Can’t Stop” and Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” videos, to “just completely, like, drown me in new movies and books and art. I lived in Nashville, where that shit isn’t accessible.” We flip […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Secrets of the Fiction Writing Economy
There were 79 degree-granting programs in creative writing in 1975; today, there are 1,269! This explosion has created a huge source of financial support for working writers, not just in the form of lecture fees, adjunctships, and temporary appointments — though these abound — but honest-to-goodness jobs: decently paid, relatively secure compared with other industries, and often even tenured. […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Why Hosting the Olympics Makes No Economic Sense
Before the 1990s hosting was usually a low-key affair. Los Angeles was the only bidder for the 1984 Olympics. It funded its games almost entirely with private money, as largely did Atlanta in 1996. Most football World Cups were played in scarcely renovated older stadiums. But globalisation and new television channels showing sport changed that. […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Story of L.A.'s Insatiable Thirst for Water
Mulholland began looking throughout Southern California for an alternative supply of freshwater, but it was Fred Eaton who came up with a solution. On a camping trip to the Sierra in the early 1890s, Eaton had gazed down upon Owens Lake and thought about all the freshwater flowing into it and going to waste. Yes, […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Philip Seymour Hoffman: 1967-2014
“In my mid–20s, an actor told me, ‘Acting ain’t no puzzle,’ ” Hoffman said, after returning to his seat. “I thought: ‘Ain’t no puzzle?!?’ You must be bad!” He laughed. “You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Philip Seymour Hoffman: 1967-2014
“In my mid–20s, an actor told me, ‘Acting ain’t no puzzle,’ ” Hoffman said, after returning to his seat. “I thought: ‘Ain’t no puzzle?!?’ You must be bad!” He laughed. “You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start […]