A highly personal list, alphabetical by author. Click here for previous lists. The Weight of Words Issac Bailey, The Assembly How one college found the balance between free speech and lifting up underheard voices. The Dirt on Pig-Pen Elif Batuman, Astra A Peanuts character and the national zeitgeist. The Romance Scammer on my Sofa Carlos Barragán, The […]
‘That’s Fake News!’
False information has reached a crescendo, but it’s hardly a new phenomenon. Originally published in Saturday Evening Post. ON A RAINY MORNING IN MAY 1917, residents of Boise, Idaho, opened their city’s newspaper to see column after column of World War I dispatches. One report stood out from the rest. It topped page 4, next […]
My favorite longform of 2021
A highly personal list, alphabetical by author. Click here for previous lists. Nikki Haley’s Time for Choosing Tim Alberta, Politico https://www.politico.com/interactives/2021/magazine-nikki-haleys-choice The type of surefooted, readable profile that comes from interviewing nearly 70 friends, associates, donors, staffers, and former colleagues. An Act of God Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/14/the-murder-scandalizing-brazils-evangelical-church A Pentecostal minister in Brazil, […]
My favorite longform of 2020
A highly personal list, alphabetical by author. Click here for previous lists. How Gillian Welch and David Rawlings Held Onto Optimism Hanif Abdurraqib, The New York Times Magazine Even during a catastrophe year, it’s possible to find creative energy, as this profile of a great songwriting duo shows. Stuck in Central China on Coronavirus Lockdown and Evacuation from […]
Republican National Convention, Day 4: “Eat and Drink Them Out of Publication”
Originally published in Indy Week. LIKE EVERY DAY AT THE REPUBLICAN National Convention, this afternoon members of the North Carolina delegation are eating and drinking well. The social schedule is so heavy that state party director Dallas Woodhouse called it “the Bataan death march.” Today’s gathering is being held at Crop On Air Studio, an […]
RNC Day 5: Tossed from the Art Pope-David Koch cocktail party
Originally published in Indy Week. WHEN I LEARNED THAT Americans for Prosperity was hosting a cocktail party honoring Art Pope and David Koch during the Republican National Convention, it seemed like a natural event for me to cover. I used to write about Pope for Indy Week, back when he was a state legislator from Raleigh and often […]
The Redemption of Chris Rose
Like his city and his newspaper, a survivor. Originally published in Columbia Journalism Review. ON A BREEZY SUNDAY MORNING in October 2006, residents of New Orleans—displaced, exhausted, wondering if they would live to see their city’s resurrection—woke to one of the most audacious acts of mass psychotherapy ever performed by an American newspaper. It took place under […]
Is the U.S. government making children fat?
Originally published in Nieman Reports. WHEN I AGREED TO WRITE about school lunches for the magazine Mother Jones, conventional wisdom tying junk food to childhood obesity was so rampant that I could have produced a serviceable story with very little research. Reading newspapers and talking with food professionals and government officials, I repeatedly heard that the nation’s biggest nutrition […]
Journalist, Interrupted
Why my stutter makes me a better reporter Originally published in the Journal of Michigan Fellows. Note: This column has been revised slightly to reflect the current state of the science and the language. It is also a snapshot in time. For a 2019 update on how I currently viewed stuttering, see my essay Stammer Time […]
Rethinking the Race Beat
Newsrooms are searching for new ways to cover racial and ethnic minorities. Do you need to be a specialist to do it right? Originally published in Columbia Journalism Review. GIVEN ATLANTA’S PLACE in modern American history, it made sense for its hometown newspaper, the Journal-Constitution, to assign a reporter to cover civil rights full-time. Until recently, that job […]
