It’s hard to think of a single magazine piece that exerts as world-historical an influence upon its genre as Gay Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” the 1966 Esquire profile that redefined the way that long-form journalists write … Read more
A few years ago, a bunch of us were sitting around the front porch of this crumpled old resort in the Catskills, knocking back drinks and talking shop. I can’t remember how it began, but when the sun went down … Read more
The Pulitzer Prize for breaking news tends to go to a massive team effort, often one in which a dozen or more reporters feed material to one, two or even three writers, who pull together the main story. Papers like … Read more
For seven days and seven nights in mid-March of 1995, David Foster Wallace took a cruise. He did not have a very good time. The results of the voyage are recorded in “Shipping Out,” an extended essay, framed … Read more
Last October, with the Greek bond crisis emerging as a danger to the European economy, Michael Lewis wrote a piece for Vanity Fair about an order of monks accused of manipulating the crisis to bilk the Greek government … Read more
Freed from the captivity of home cookery and the rarefied practice of restaurant criticism, food is now a legitimate lens for thoughtful cultural journalism. It’s also a massive revenue generator in mainstream media, as many commentators pointed out … Read more
The Great Zucchini has a secret. And in “The Peekaboo Paradox,” Gene Weingarten exhumes the history that haunts the most popular children’s entertainer in Washington, D.C. The story, which ran in January 2006, is the best thing ever … Read more
Environmental journalists often feel married to the tragic narrative. Pollution, extinction, invasion: The stories are endless, and endlessly the same. Our editors see the pattern and bury us in the back pages; our readers see it and abandon us on … Read more
When I was living in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and came back sometime later to see what was left, one of the things I found was the November 1998 issue of Esquire magazine. The cover with Mister Rogers on … Read more
In “Nobody Else is Jim Brown,” sportswriter Ralph Wiley constructs a profile of perhaps the greatest football player in NFL history, a man so legendary that the word legend actually applies. Written for ESPN’s Page 2, the piece shows … Read more
