Gangrey All-Stars: Top 5 Longreads of 2010 Gangrey.com, btw, is the heart and soul of long-form journalism. Click for Top 5 lists from writers including Thomas Lake (Sports Illustrated), Ben Montgomery (St. Petersburg Times), Wright Thompson (ESPN), Michael Kruse (St. Petersburg Times), and Justin Heckert (ESPN).
Tag: longreads
Gillian Reagan is an editor at Capital New York. She does other stuff, too. *** My rule was to steer clear of Capital articles (although you will recognize some bylines from contributors). These articles that weren’t necessarily the best writing of the year, but have frequently popped up and rolled around in my brain long […]
Who’s Funding Russia’s Skinhead Terrorists? “Five years ago,” said Dmitry Bakhirev, a lawyer for one of the National Socialist Organization defendants, “you would hear about some skinheads beating a Tajik migrant on the metro. Then it became knives and aluminum bats. Then firearms. Soon you will be hearing about machine guns and grenade launchers.” By […]
To Have Is to Owe: A History of Debt Never has the governing class allowed anyone to question the sacred principle that we all must pay our debts. That principle has recently been exposed to be a flagrant lie. As it turns out, we all don’t have to pay our debts. Only some of us […]
Paul Ford was an editor at Harper’s Magazine; now he’s wandering around, looking at stuff and writing computer programs. *** Tony Judt, “Night,” New York Review of Books (January 14) This was the year of the dying critic. Most writers would do themselves, and their readers, a service by dying without all the self-elegies (“selfegies”?). […]
My First Time: A Political Novice Runs for Office I ran for Congress in Maryland’s 8th District because I thought the government was spending too much money. I had no idea how much I’d be spending, or what I’d have to show for it when the ballots were counted. My rookie stats — 2,242 votes, […]
The Mystery Of Erica Blasberg: Why Did the LPGA Golfer Take Her Own Life? “Did I push her too hard?” [her father] Mel asks, his voice cracking slightly. “That question will haunt me for the rest of my life. Every world-class athlete has to give up their childhood to some degree. They’re given a special […]
From 1948: Pearl Harbor in Retrospect nprfreshair: “Pearl Harbor struck a country satiated with war’s alarms. True, we had put through the draft and had actually reached the shooting stage with German submarines. But as a people we were still talking of war, without really accepting its imminence. Then, into our national complacency, came a […]
Andrea Pitzer is writer and editor of Nieman Storyboard. *** To eliminate some of the choices that have already been popular—hello, David Grann! ;)—I haven’t included anyone I’ve met in person. All stories from 2010. Rabbi to the Rescue, by Martha Wexler and Jeff Lunden from The Washington Post Magazine Spiritual longing, the Holocaust, and […]
Don Blankenship: The Dark Lord of Coal Country During the 1980s, the company injected more than 1.4 billion gallons of slurry underground — seven times the amount of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico during the BP disaster this spring. According to the lawsuit, Massey knew that the ground around the injection sites was […]
Unauthorized, but Not Untrue: The real story of a biographer in a celebrity culture of public denials, media timidity, and legal threats Presidential wrath has its niggling little consequences. After almost 30 years as a contributing editor for Washingtonian magazine, I was suddenly removed from the masthead. The editor said he disapproved of my Bush […]
Do Ask, Must Tell: Turkey’s military doesn’t just discriminate against gays — it humiliates them To seek exemption, therefore, many gay men have to endure pseudo-scientific tests designed to appraise both their homosexuality and the extent to which it might render them “unfit” for service. “Parts of the test I took included having to draw […]
Since Beating that Left Student in Coma, His Father Has Kept a Constant Vigil Ken quit his job running a health club in Loudoun County to care for his only son. Every day, he brushes Ryan’s teeth and bathes him, administers 50 medications, feeds him through a tube attached to his stomach, changes his catheter, […]
Alex Pappademas is a staff writer for GQ. *** Rules: Nothing not published this year, nothing from GQ, because I work there, and—in the spirit of the assignment—nothing I didn’t first read on my iPhone. (And I realize now, having done this whole thing, that everything on the main list is from a print-based publication, […]
The Real-Life Swedish Murder that Inspired Stieg Larsson ‘Teet fits the Hannibal Lecter of Sweden image,’ Kärmas says, referring to his piercing stare and square jaw. ‘He is a tabloid editor’s wet dream.’ According to Angell, Härm’s former mother-in-law was also, at the time of his arrest, employed by the Swedish tabloid Expressen, a newspaper […]
The Fall of Niagara Falls Mike Hudson, the founder of the weekly tabloid Niagara Falls Reporter, freely refers to his town as “a godforsaken place,” and it was hard to argue with the assessment in the neighborhood surrounding the bar. The area is the worst the city has to offer, a place of drugs and […]
Teen Mathletes Do Battle at Algorithm Olympics Neal Wu’s last chance for international glory, and maybe America’s, too, begins with a sound like a hippo crunching through a field of dry leaves—the sound of 315 computer prodigies at 315 workstations ripping into 315 gray envelopes in unison. “You have five hours,” a voice booms across […]
The Pentagon Papers Trial There were, inevitably, some individuals who spoke up eloquently, providing dramatic courtroom examples of Americana and of the war’s impact upon society. Jan Sirois, a 24-year-old divorced mother of two from a military family, said that the only publication she ever read was Hairdo magazine, a supplement to studies at a […]
Matt O’Rourke is interactive group creative director for Crispin Porter+Bogusky in Boulder. copymattt: For those of you that like the internet for things other than cats and boobies, I give you 5 of my favorite Longreads from the past 12 months. Hit-and-run vicitm was quiet, dependable, co-workers say If you’re really lucky, Andrew Meacham will still […]
Choire Sicha is (of course) co-founder/editor of The Awl, which also happened to publish some of my favorite longreads of 2010. choire: In honor of the Longreads year-end fiesta of Things That People Have Read That Are Considered Long (And Also Worthy) from 2010, herewith, five things that stuck with me. But first, a note […]
I, Reader by Alexander Chee wadcity: This is a wonderfully rambling essay over at The Morning News on reading books in the age of the iPad. Appropriately enough, I read it on my iPhone, in bed last night, thanks to Instapaper. (I didn’t post immediately because I couldn’t remember who’d directed me to it; this morning […]
Deadly Medicine During the congressional hearings, lawmakers heard from former F.D.A. scientists who had criticized their agency’s oversight of the Ketek trials and the drug-approval process. One was Dr. David Ross, who had been the F.D.A.’s chief reviewer of new drugs for 10 years, and was now the national director of clinical public-health programs for […]
The Sports Infidelity Equation John Nazarian, a former police officer, has been a private investigator for 20 years. He says that on average, he has about a half-dozen pro athletes a year as clients. Usually, it’s because they were involved in extramarital affairs and the mistress is seeking money for her silence. He says he […]
The New Gawker Media The problem with Gawker Media’s current model—and this is true of many other sites, too, including the Huffington Post—is that it’s based on pageviews and those tyrannical CPMs. It’s essentially a junk-mail direct marketing model, which Batty is very comfortable with: watch him talk about how Gawker Media has “massively scaled […]
Jamie Dimon: America’s Least-Hated Banker At Bank One, Dimon had ceased buying mortgages from outside brokers because their performance was poor. At Chase, he bought them. When I asked why, Dimon said underlings convinced him they were exercising proper caution, adding, “It was a huge business, packaging and selling [the loans] to Fannie Mae.” Turning […]
Chris Jones is a writer at large for Esquire. (His stories are on many of your Top Fives.) He’s currently blogging at My Second Empire. David Grann: The Mark of a Masterpiece, The New Yorker, July 12, 2010 Just a perfectly constructed, painful reveal of the sinister side of the art world, starting at its […]
The Quaid Conspiracy “They wanted to separate us,” says Randy Quaid, “because Evi is very intuitive and very smart. She’s the smartest person I know. You can call her crazy, you can call her whatever you want, but she is my lifeline, and if she wasn’t with me, I don’t know where I’d be.” By […]
You must be logged in to post a comment.