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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

Filmmaker David Layton isn’t a stranger to the newsroom. Before he produced and directed documentaries, he was a newspaper reporter, so perhaps it’s not surprising that his next project, “The…
May 3, 2017
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
C.S. Lewis and Tolkien go to see "Snow White," and D.H. Lawrence goes pulp fiction

C.S. Lewis and Tolkien go to see “Snow White,” and D.H. Lawrence goes pulp fiction

Unlikely pairings seem to be a theme this week. Reporting a story under the influence of mind-altering drugs. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien going to see “Snow White” together. D.H.…
April 28, 2017
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

“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.”

Why is it great? I promise this is the last you’ll see of Springsteen on this site for the foreseeable future. But I had somehow missed this story by one…
April 26, 2017
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

Last year, Malcolm Gay, an arts reporter at The Boston Globe, stumbled across the seemingly impossible: an untold story about the Holocaust.[pq]There’s an inheritance that was lost and can never…
April 25, 2017
America and race: a disturbing undercurrent that runs through our past and present

America and race: a disturbing undercurrent that runs through our past and present

The theme of America and race — and, unfortunately, hatred and even murder — runs through this week’s posts. The Osage Indians who were systematically killed for their oil in David…
April 21, 2017
5 Questions: Anne Helen Petersen and the white supremacists who came for Whitefish

5 Questions: Anne Helen Petersen and the white supremacists who came for Whitefish

Anne Helen Petersen has spent the last year covering Trump rallies and protests, the anti-Dakota Access Pipeline camp at Standing Rock, crowd-funded healthcare, survivalist “preppers” and what it means when…
April 20, 2017

“Barcantier, of Le Kremlin, who had jumped in the river, tried in vain to throttle, aided by his Great Dane, the meddler who was dragging him out.”

Why is it great? Félix Fénéon (1861-1944) was a clerk in the French War Office during World War I, a literary editor, art dealer, anarchist and journalist. While working for…
April 19, 2017
5(ish) Questions: David Grann and "Killers of the Flower Moon"

5(ish) Questions: David Grann and “Killers of the Flower Moon”

Sometimes the idea for a book springs from what you don’t know.David Grann had never heard of the “Osage Murders” until a historian he was talking to mentioned the series…
April 18, 2017