So much of tech journalism today is antiseptic or fawning, with beat reporters chasing the latest product release or “exclusive” CEO interview. Adrian Chen, on the other hand, is a master at revealing the human side of technology, and often … Read more
Chris Hamby’s recent investigative series for BuzzFeed reads like dystopian fiction. He tells us of a powerful “global super court” that companies use to sue sovereign nations for cutting into their profits. Proceedings are usually secret, public oversight is … Read more
In our Brave New Distributed World, journalists suffer from a disorienting lack of control. Lack of control over audiences, over time spent on page, over clicks… the list goes on. The most any digital reporter can do is hope that … Read more
I follow the journalist Randy Potts on social media, so I had known for weeks that he was planning to launch “The Bible Went Down With The Birdie Jean,” a serialized, reported memoir about life as the gay grandson of … Read more
This week I thought I’d depart a little from the regular format, because this wasn’t a normal week. We went to the polls, we elected a billionaire reality-TV star to the presidency, and then to top things off, Leonard Cohen … Read more
Anyone who’s taken a shortcut and skipped the primer while painting a room knows the kind of results you can get. Uneven. Unpolished. The primer sets the stage for a beautiful wall. That’s kind of the idea behind the storytelling … Read more
Every once in a while you read a story that feels so authentic and true, you wish you’d written it. That’s how I felt reading Jon Mooallem’s New York Times Magazine piece about a self-professed “idler” named Gavin Pretor-Pinney … Read more
This is the ninth of ten stories Storyboard will post from a new collection honoring Michael Brick [see our 5 Questions on the project], each featuring an introduction by a writer who loved his work. Today’s entry is introduced by Charles … Read more
Chris Jones This story was published in May 2008, five years into Chris Jones’s career at Esquire. Jones was 35 at the time, and he says it was probably the best time … Read more