Viagra, Prozac, diet pills, even party drugs—all can be had with just a click of your computer mouse. And there’s little anyone can do to stop the growing Internet drug trade. Originally published in Ladies’ Home Journal. THREE YEARS AGO, MARY ELLEN MELLOR received a phone call from her husband, who was at a hospital. “I’m in […]
Steel-Town Lockdown
Corrections Corporation of America is trying to turn Youngstown, Ohio, into the private-prison capital of the world. Originally published in Mother Jones. Reprinted in The Best Business Stories of the Year, edited by Andrew Leckey and Marshall Loeb (Vintage Books, 2001). BOB HAGAN WAS READING HIS E-MAIL one July afternoon when the telephone rang at his home in Youngstown, […]
Scam Schools
Thinking of learning a new job skill? Beware of phony colleges that promise great careers but leave graduates with worthless certificates and staggering debt. Originally published in Good Housekeeping. BRANDI E. CANICK, 28, LIVES WITH HER HUSBAND, a welder, in an apartment in Kearns, Utah. Three years ago when she decided her job at a dry cleaner […]
Labor stories from Southern Exposure
No Ways Tired (Southern Exposure, Summer 1996) Kmart workers in Greensboro, N.C., are invoking the spirit and tactics of the civil rights movement to create a new model for union organizing. (Opens as a PDF.) Taking Stock (Southern Exposure, Spring 1994) Workers thought the days of paternalism at Cone Mills were long past—until the company offered to […]
Don’t Count Your Chickens
Click here for “Don’t Count Your Chickens,” Southern Exposure, Summer 1989
