Strictly Q&A

Digital longform, and the pitfalls of the "build it and they will come" approach to business models

Digital longform, and the pitfalls of the “build it and they will come” approach to business models

“I don’t know what we were thinking.”“Well, what do you think?”“You tell me. I have no idea.”When Aleksandr Gorbachev decided to research the business models of digital longform publications for…
July 14, 2016
Kari Howard
Rebecca Nesson: "I like aliveness, whether it's miserable or whether it's ecstatic"

Rebecca Nesson: “I like aliveness, whether it’s miserable or whether it’s ecstatic”

Rebecca Nesson crafted an oral story for the Moth on her marital crisis.Three years ago, Rebecca Nesson thought her marriage was falling apart. During a bitter argument with her husband,…
July 7, 2016
Daniel A. Gross
Ezra Edelman: "The job of an interviewer is to prompt people to go to a place they didn't even realize they were prepared to go to"

Ezra Edelman: “The job of an interviewer is to prompt people to go to a place they didn’t even realize they were prepared to go to”

Forty-six minutes into Episode 4 of Ezra Edelman’s epic documentary “O.J. Simpson: Made in America,” the director squares off with Barry Scheck, the defense attorney who discredited–or, at the very…
June 7, 2016
Elon Green
5 Questions with: Ben Montgomery on Michael Brick and "Everyone Leaves Behind a Name"

5 Questions with: Ben Montgomery on Michael Brick and “Everyone Leaves Behind a Name”

Perhaps as much as any modern journalist, Michael Brick brought the style of Ben Hecht’s “A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago” into the 21st century newsroom. Hecht made the…
May 10, 2016
Michael Fitzgerald

Susan Orlean: “My method of reporting is just to be there”

Susan Orlean is storied for her stories. Since 1992 she’s been a staff writer at The New Yorker, and her 1998 book “The Orchid Thief” was made into the movie…
April 22, 2016
Kim Tingley
Dale Russakoff: “How do you write a book without a hero?”

Dale Russakoff: “How do you write a book without a hero?”

Dale Russakoff spent 28 years as a reporter for The Washington Post before writing her first book, “The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools?” Russakoff, who took a buyout…
February 23, 2016
Ricki Morell
Joshua Hammer: “I’ve never been in this kind of hot zone before”

Joshua Hammer: “I’ve never been in this kind of hot zone before”

Joshua Hammer started his foreign correspondent’s life as a rotating bureau chief for Newsweek from 1992 to 2006. He’s now a contributing editor to Smithsonian and Outside magazines, and contributes…
February 10, 2016
Davis Harper
Jake Silverstein: "Immersing you in worlds not your own"

Jake Silverstein: “Immersing you in worlds not your own”

Jake Silverstein started editing the New York Times Magazine in May 2014, after six years editing Texas Monthly. During Silverstein’s tenure as editor, then editor-in-chief at Texas Monthly,the magazine was a…
January 19, 2016
Michael Fitzgerald
Roger Lowenstein: “I don’t like the word simplify; I prefer the word explain”

Roger Lowenstein: “I don’t like the word simplify; I prefer the word explain”

Roger LowensteinRoger Lowenstein is the author of six nonfiction books, including his latest, American’s Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve. A former Wall Street Journal reporter, he…
December 11, 2015
Ricki Morell

Erik Vance: “Scientists are quirky everywhere”

The National Association of Science Writers gave Erik Vance a 2015 Science in Society award for science reporting for his story “Why Nothing Works,” published in Discover magazine, saying his…
December 8, 2015
Kristin Ohlson