Articles

Literary journalism gets some love, from "Hiroshima" to Shane Bauer's prison exposé

Literary journalism gets some love, from “Hiroshima” to Shane Bauer’s prison exposé

A weekly roundup of some favorite things, for your reading and listening pleasure
May 12, 2017
Kari Howard

The roadblocks, and the dangers, for investigative journalists in the Arab world

As the Arab Spring ushered in less openness rather than more, a Jordan-based group supports reporters taking chances in this fledgling movement
May 11, 2017
Abby Sewell

“There’s no room for hate in ice cream,” Dennis liked to remind himself.

—David Wolman and Julian Smith, “The Cold War,” Epic magazine, 2015.
May 10, 2017
Kari Howard
5(ish) Questions: Josh O'Kane and "The Ballad of Fogarty's Cove"

5(ish) Questions: Josh O’Kane and “The Ballad of Fogarty’s Cove”

The Globe and Mail reporter talks about his Nova Scotia story exploring the love of a place, and the sorrow over leaving when it cannot sustain you
May 9, 2017
Kari Howard

“She was beautiful but when she tasted the water from the glass on her lectern she smiled sadly as if it were bitter for, in spite of her civil zeal, she had a taste for the melancholy – for the smell of orange rinds and wood smoke – that was extraordinary.”

—John Cheever, "The Wapshot Chronicle," 1957
May 4, 2017
Kari Howard
5(ish) Questions: Legendary editor Gene Roberts reflects on a lifetime in journalism

5(ish) Questions: Legendary editor Gene Roberts reflects on a lifetime in journalism

As filmmakers seek funding for a documentary about the newsman who transformed The Philadelphia Inquirer in the 1970s and '80s, he talks about how his reporters zigged instead of zagged…
May 3, 2017
Julie Schwietert Collazo
How Michelle Garcia told the story of Juárez, a city lost to violence, through its dogs

How Michelle Garcia told the story of Juárez, a city lost to violence, through its dogs

The Al Jazeera America piece, reported with Mexican reporter Ignacio Alvarado Alvarez, haunts with its indelible portrait of pets paying the price when a terrorized place goes feral
May 2, 2017
Carolina A. Miranda
5(ish) Questions: Nathan Thornburgh talks mind-blowing drugs and Anthony Bourdain

5(ish) Questions: Nathan Thornburgh talks mind-blowing drugs and Anthony Bourdain

The co-founder of the unapologetically longform travel-food-politics site Roads & Kingdoms talks about teaming up with the chef-raconteur and reporting while under the influence of the hallucinogen ayahuasca
April 27, 2017
Davis Harper

“He sat in an old chair near a particle board pinned with the yellowed obituaries of steelworker friends who died too early, including Robert Plater. 60. Cancer. A paper target practice figure hung next to the obituaries. Its heart had been blown out.”

—Jeffrey Fleishman, "Here's why Bruce Springsteen's blue-collar heroes have made Donald Trump their rock star," Los Angeles Times, October 27, 1016.
April 26, 2017
Kari Howard
The Boston Globe's Malcolm Gay and a story of love, and art, lost to the Holocaust

The Boston Globe’s Malcolm Gay and a story of love, and art, lost to the Holocaust

The writer talks about reporting history in real time as he stumbles on the untold tale of a promising composer killed by the Nazis -- and the woman who has…
April 25, 2017
Katia Savchuk