“If I were hauling 600 miles across the Arctic, I’d choose J. for stamina and his uncomplaining nature; A. for her medical skills and ability to play music; N. because he’s optimistic and multilingual; H. for her understanding of the … Read more
The lede came to David Grann a year before he would complete his epic story and a year after the events it describes: “The man felt like a speck in the frozen nothingness. Every direction he turned he could see … Read more
I watched the movie “Network” again the other day and was unnerved by how accurately screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky predicted today’s media and political environment. The line between news and scripted stories blurs, and truth is an old-fashioned concept. Middle-aged journalists … Read more
The fog of war is especially thick in Syria, where access is nearly impossible for foreign journalists and accounts of the war often reach the outside world via social media. In the besieged Eastern Ghouta region, a blond, baby-faced teenager … Read more
Why is it so great? I recently watched the movie “Network” again, and it could have been written in 2018 instead of more than 40 years earlier. This line almost sums up the last presidential election, doesn’t it? And the … Read more
Jennifer Sahn, executive editor of Pacific Standard, understands why writers sometimes feel frustrated when editors take weeks to respond to their pitches or don’t write back at all. But she wants writers to see the other side, too. The … Read more
It was John Steinbeck’s birthday this week, and I came across this quote by him: “Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.” That made me think of the haute … Read more
Why is it so great? The writing in this famous passage is so good that George Orwell wrote a parody of it designed to ridicule the bloated writing of his day: “Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success … Read more