I admire this reporting as a feat of yearslong trust-building, especially with Ana, and also with Officer Armendariz. Emily Baumgaertner Nunn's unflinching attention to detail, refusal to oversimplify intertwined systemic problems, and deft writing leave readers understanding not just how minors end up on the Blade and places like it, but why girls voluntarily go back after being rescued. The story is multiple things in one: essential accountability reporting with policy implications, an empathetic profile of a brave young woman, and a spotlight on the everyday heroism of the people trying, in different ways, to give her and others like her a shot at a better life.

I love stories that make me feel like I'm peeking behind the curtains of a magic show, and there was no bigger magic show for me and my fellow New Yorkers this year than the rise of Zohran Mamdani. This story by Corey Atad showed us exactly how Mamdani managed to get the attention of everyone not just in New York but around the world, and it's clearly the work of both deep reporting and the keenly honed eye of a critic who can appreciate the effort that goes into getting the right shot.  

Time is a luxury in this business, but taking the opportunity to follow a story for months (or years) can pay off in a big way. "Grave Mistakes" is both deeply reported and thoughtfully organized, a true example of a journalist who spends time with sources and then gets out of the way when it comes down to putting words onto the computer screen. This story is informative and elegantly written, without being overwrought.

With the deliberately plain language and transparent arc of "How To Fix a Typewriter and Your Life," Kurt Streeter has created an extraordinary portrait of concepts that are hard to say anything insightful about head on. He explores existential despair, the skills and experiences of elders, the beauty of mechanical things, how physical bodies gain their own knowledge, the saving of a soul, and the shoring up of a community. The danger of "old-timey stories" lies in how easy it is for them to veer into sentiment or nostalgia, but Streeter's deep respect for both men and awe at the passing of a vocation from one to the other give this story the weight of an almost religious experience. 

This New York Times piece is the kind of feature story I rarely encounter anymore, one that carries you like a good short story does. No celebrities, no Trump, no Big Issues. Honestly, I skimmed past it on the NYT website — not newsy enough! — but then a friend sent it to me and said I had to read it, that she’d cried the whole way through. It’s a beautifully written exploration of a friendship and the passage of time. Plus — typewriters! I love stories with an object at the center.

A dark lake. A meteor shower. A missing man, determined sheriff and diver who always finds the bodies. This story took readers on an irresistible detective hunt through murky waters, small towns and international border crossings — and delved into the depths of devotion, hubris, and faith. All of the characters were complicated; the reporting rounded out their desires and downfalls. I love the subheads detailing how many days the kayaker had been missing. It really brought home the urgency of the hunt and aftermath. This gem reminded me how compelling true crime stories can be. 

I shared this story with so many people: A narrative about a dude who moves cars around the Big Apple for a living. Who knew? The details were delicious. The data was rich — and astounding. The monotony, uncertainty and futility were palpable. I felt like I was with the guy, waiting and wondering and thinking existential thoughts. It reminded me of why I could never live in New York City. And how wonderful it is to be dropped into worlds that surround us — but we know nothing about, especially in the talented hands of an immersive and thoughtful writer.

I've thought about this every day. Everyone needs to read it because every one of us will feel the impact of pharmaceutical companies creating lives devoid of pleasure. Someday, when we try to understand how we all became so much sadder than we needed to be, this will be the skeleton key: “Between the endless stream of soul-destroying bad news, giving up post-dinner cigarettes, endless app-matches, the slow creep of middle-age malaise, falling into a stupor after watching ‘The Shining’ in 37 parts on TikTok instead of going to a movie, and any of the other seemingly endless ways to disconnect from pleasure — maybe it doesn’t matter so much anyway.”

Even in a year of so much powerful reporting from Gaza, this Financial Times story seared itself into memory by combining maps, videos, sketches, and interviews to document the annihilation of a refugee camp inside one of the hardest places to report on Earth. What made it so haunting is how it interwove the mass horrors of a military cleansing with the place's human moments: the "pistachio-stuffed baklava," the cafe music nights, the "romances blessed" at a now-flattened wedding hall.

Reporting on the unseen mental health struggles of one of the Senate's most prominent members was a huge minefield, and yet Ben Terris pulled it off, delivering a dogged, sensitive and disturbing profile of John Fetterman and some of the best political journalism of the year. Every paragraph featured some new scoop or revealing detail about Fetterman's life. But between the newsiest bits, there was also an elegantly told and empathetic story about a man increasingly unrecognizable to the people who loved him. 

At the start of each new year, I pick two words that I aspire to bring into my life. In 2025, one was “wonder.” After moving from California to New York, I wanted to be intentional about how to find and cultivate feelings of wonder and awe in my everyday life. This beautiful Atlantic piece by Peter Wehner meditates on why this hard-to-describe emotion is so essential: how awe humbles us, is a portal to feelings of transcendence, and can help us feel more grounded and purposeful in dark or chaotic times. His words have stuck with me.

I discovered this 2024 Washington Post story when it bubbled up as a winner of the 2025 Society for Features Journalism’s Excellence-in-Features contest. From the contest judges: “The saga of the maybe-kidnapped, maybe-rescued alley cat comes alive through Andrea Sachs’ layering of neighborhood sources with nuanced details. And the writing is stellar.” So true! Set aside some time to savor this one if you missed it when it first came out.

Comedian Tamara Yajia's memoir swings from bawdy to beautiful. In a nation where immigrants' stories can be reduced to clichés or wielded like political batons, it reminds readers that each such story has its own rhythms, surprises, and unexpected style of humor. 

Cassidy Randall's account of the "Denali Damsels" is riveting and suspenseful.

I've really enjoyed two recent books about game-changing newspapers: “The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice,” and “Paper of Wreckage,” about the New York Post. I found the oral history compilation format — which both books used — incredibly compelling for telling these specific stories. They read much like the publications themselves: frenetic, boundary-pushing, wildly imperfect — and always a gripping read. 

New York Times investigative reporter David Enrich gives us an intimate look into the coordinated campaign to weaken press freedom in the U.S. Through detailed stories of individual cases, Enrich explains how risky it already is to investigate the rich and powerful, especially for freelance reporters without big institutional backing. And how powerful legal scholars, lawyers, and politicians try to expand libel lawsuits to silence the press. I love all of Enrich’s books, but this one is especially timely.

"They Poisoned The World" follows Michael Hickey from Hoosier Falls in his fight against one of the most dangerous chemicals in the world: PFAS, also called “forever chemicals.” PFAS are linked to cancer, obesity, infertility and a weak immune system, among others. Reporter Mariah Blake is one of the main journalists investigating PFAS and explains, after years of research, that big chemical companies knew about the risks for decades, but still decided to keep producing and using PFAS without appropriate safeguards. The book shows how hard it is for people who got poisoned to fight these big companies, get justice and keep going with their lives.

If you’re interested in the creative process, this chunky book is a repository of inspiration and micro details. Dive into the minds of wide-ranging artists, from Suzan-Lori Parks to Sofia Coppola to George Saunders, each expertly shepherded towards revealing interviews by former New York magazine editor Adam Moss. “The Work of Art” somehow accomplishes the impossible: it encourages you to marvel at the effort involved in making great art, yet convinces you to chip away at the effort yourself. 

A podcast that talks about how you can take the traumatized family out of the South but you can't easily take the source of the trauma out of the family. Lee Hawkins unpacks his family's violent history and exposes America's brutal history, which still lingers in all of our bones. I was surprised by the depth of this podcast and Hawkins's honesty about his family situation. Part journalism, history, and memoir, and always a compelling listen.

I have long listened to Fela's music and even saw the Broadway play, but this historical podcast filled in a lot of holes. I discovered that Fela's activism came from his mother, who challenged a monarch, and that an American woman helped guide him in his musical career. Fascinating history and a painful story about a (flawed) hero who paid a high price for opposing his government.

Vivid, personal, emotionally rich storytelling about a complex problem. 

At a time when — in the genre of "limited series" narrative podcasts — there's a glut of overwrought, over-produced true crime, this show is beautifully minimalist: a son, a father, and a bet, with stakes as big as the crisis facing American democracy right now. 

Signal Hill takes two of my favorite journalistic forms — magazines and audio documentaries — and mashes them together. The result, a podcast with "issues" rather than seasons, structured around a table of contents (complete with editor's notes), is beautiful, weird, and mesmerizing. There's nothing else like it out there, and at a time when it feels like there's less and less space for longform, craft-obsessed work of any kind, it's a true breath of fresh air. This is the kind of stuff that made me want to be a journalist in the first place. I hope it lives forever.

“Shell Game’s” first season was released in late 2024 but I didn’t discover it until 2025 when I was reading a story about the rocky future of narrative podcasts. That story raved about “Shell Game” so, having just written and narrated a podcast myself, I sought it out. And wow. Evan Ratliff, a tech journalist, makes an AI voice clone of himself and then sets his clone loose in the world to chat with friends, family, phone scammers. It’s a hugely entertaining and unnerving look at a vital phenomenon that many of us are struggling to understand.

What if we could stabilize the future of media, journalism, and the internet? The solution could take the form of 26 words known as Section 230, buried in a much bigger act that Congress passed in 1996. And with that quest in mind, host Brian Reed embarks on a podcast journey to get to the heart of press freedom and what it'll take to recapture it.

Elvira Lind chronicles her husband Oscar Isaac's personal and professional journey as he prepares to play the lead role in a production of “Hamlet” at the Public Theater, at a time when his mother was ill and their first child is born. A remarkable piece of art about how we humans make art amidst the mess of being human. 

I’ve been listening to singer-songwriter Jensen McRae for the past few months. There’s nothing quite like an artist who can capture the rapturous highs and haunting lows of a doomed relationship — all within a single song. Her work is lyrical storytelling at its finest. She is a writer’s writer, a compulsive diarist, and has a pretty cool Substack!