This week, our editors recommend stories by Bushra Seddique, Simon van Zuylen-Wood, Laura Mauldin, Kathryn Miles, and Lucas Mann.
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Posted inEditor's Pick
The Tragedy of Jayquan McKenley
From the current New York issue’s package on drill music comes this urgent, saddening profile of Jayquan McKenley, a sweethearted teenager and burgeoning artist whose murder sparked a new wave of handwringing around the rap subgenre. Even to drill’s defenders, it seemed clear that social media had sped up a cycle of retaliatory shootings; the Bronx’s […]
Posted inUncategorized
Odd, Genius, or Something In Between: A Reading List on Writers
“Give me the weird tics, the turns of phrase, the strange beginnings. Give me the writer in their natural habitat.”
Posted inCuration, Nonfiction, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, our editors recommend stories by Caitlin Dickerson, Samira Shackle, Mitchell S. Jackson, Roberto José Andrade Franco, and Ian Dille.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Patrick Radden Keefe Gets to the Bottom of It
If you’re a sucker for hearing how great journalists report and structure their work — and who isn’t? — this Q&A with New Yorker write-around specialist Patrick Radden Keefe makes for a perfect Monday read. It’s always the same: It starts with a series of big beats. If it’s an article, it starts with eight […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Gary Smith, Master of the Sports Longform, Left at the Very Top. Why?
The latest in SI‘s “Where Are They Now?” series covers longtime staffer Smith, arguably one of the finest profilers the journalism world has ever known. His portraits of Mike Tyson, Andre Agassi, and other icons cut through the insularity of sports fandom to become the stuff of magazine legend. Now, Joseph Bien-Kahn heads to South […]
Posted inNonfiction
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, our editors recommend notable features and essays by Katie Barnes, Rachel Handler, Alex Hawkins, Lila Shapiro, and Raksha Vasudevan.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Nathan Fielder Is Out of His Mind (and Inside Yours)
On the axis of cringe comedy, Nathan Fielder’s work on TV series Nathan For You ranks somewhere between Sasha Baron Cohen and Covering Your Eyes and Ears to Escape the Vicarious Embarrassment. But Lila Shapiro’s profile, coming just ahead of Fielder’s return to television, attempts to peel back the layers of artifice between man and world. […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
In Search of Chad Hugo
For music fans of a certain age (that certain age hopefully being 14 to 94), Chad Hugo is a legendary producer: half of The Neptunes, along with Pharrell Williams. Yet he always played the back — and has receded even more so in recent years. Hugo’s reticence may never fully give way in this profile […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Wings, Sweat, and Tears
While it’s not the first in-depth story about the capsaicin-fueled mayhem of YouTube talk show Hot Ones (see: this 2019 Verge story), Jaya Saxena’s piece goes beyond profile to something more like exegesis. We know that Scoville units introduce a candid new wrinkle to the tired celebrity interview; now, the question becomes what to do […]