Holmes spent a year reporting this story about two drill sergeants—one black and one white—in a company at Fort Knox, Ky. The piece chronicles their jockeying for power, advancement and recognition. The men’s candor is remarkable—their comments about each other … Read more
Stabler’s series about a black music prodigy is well-reported and -written. We like the rich detail, the elegant descriptions, deft characterizations. What seems left out are more insights into why the 16-year-old, Sam Johnson, has such a hard time. Stabler … Read more
In this final, sad chapter of the series, a West African immigrant, Adama Camara, scrubs toilets and wipes tables for 16 hours a day. The world is a grimy, dreary, bone-tired place. There’s too much work for too little gain, … Read more
In this second installment of Hull’s series, you’ll find this small example of how even a newspaper article (the voice of which is usually straight and communitarian) can include irony: “As Saul and Nallely talk about which Starbucks puts the … Read more
The subject of this profile is not like most of us. Is she crazy? A hustler? Or does she know things we can’t? We need the writer to make sense of it all, to guide us through the tale with … Read more
Gurnett’s attitude in this piece is curious, compassionate, never melodramatic. Gurnett achieves "narrative distance," a detachment from her subject, even as she seeks to understand him. Her writing has more voice than we often find in smaller papers: She uses … Read more
LeDuff got a job on the cutting floor at a North Carolina slaughterhouse, where the work burns your muscles and dulls your mind. He hacked meat off of bone and watched blacks compete with Mexicans to survive under the watch … Read more
Ojito profiles two men, one black and one white, who have fled Cuba and live in Miami. In Cuba they were close friends; in America they have grown distant from and mistrustful of each other. They have been subsumed by … Read more
This is a fascinating account of an integrated Fundamentalist southern church and its courageous struggles with race. Through his focus on two church couples, one white and one black, Sack deciphers the congregation’s complex mix of attitudes and history, their … Read more
This is the tale of a black park ranger and a white landowner, the descendant of slaveowners, in Louisiana. It’s a story about the unearthing of grievances, about perception, truth and how history is recounted. The piece is a narrative, … Read more
