Episode 15: Jonah Weiner
Jonah Weiner, contributing editor at Rolling Stone, pop critic at Slate, and contributor to The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker, interviewed by Aaron Lammer.
“The thing that I’ve found useful is really actually to delete everything that I’ve written and go at it fresh, and re-envision it again: this is going to be my new lede now. That’s really the best way to do it, because if there are these vestigial sentences, and vestigial sequences or paragraphs that are in the draft, for me, that’s just going to snap me back to where my head was at, in an unproductive way… Often, I’ll find that that is just this great cure-all. Just delete it all, go for a walk or whatever, and then sit down and start writing an entirely different feature about the exact same subject.”
Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week’s episode!
Show notes and links:
- “Prying Eyes” (New Yorker • Oct 2012)
- “Kanye West Has a Goblet” (Slate • Aug 2010)
- “The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress” (New York Times Magazine • Dec 2008)
- Interview: Vanessa Grigoriadis (The Writearound • Sep 2011)
- jonahweiner.com
- The Writearound
- @jonahweiner
- Weiner on Longform
November 2012
2 posts
Further Reading is a new blog feature in which we take a deeper look at topics from stories featured on Longform. It is produced along with Pitt Writers.
The early days of the Bronx Zoo.
Last week, Longform reprinted “Wild Things,” David Samuels’s wide-reaching exploration of zoos’ troubling history through the lens of the Bronx Zoo, one of America’s largest and oldest metropolitan animal menageries. Samuels dissects the metaphors inherent in caging animals for the benefit of spectators:
The fantasy that today’s zoos engender is clearly more benign than that of the early-twentieth-century racists, and yet it is not entirely dissimilar. Employing the familiar techniques of Saturday-morning cartoons, zoos use anthropomorphic logic and illusion to maintain the link between a love of animals and the desire to escape the evils that men inflict on both animals and their fellow human beings. Zoos promise us a refuge from the horrors engraved in the hearts of men and born of the conditional nature of our existence—which are therefore permanent and ineradicable. Zoos are a distinguishing and representative feature of a world of cages and enclosures inhabited by men and animals alike.
Here’s further reading on the benefits and detriments of zoos, their possible future, and the conservationist movement’s dark history:
October 2012
7 posts
Big thanks to David Samuels, the latest guest on our podcast and the latest author to let us reprint a classic piece that was not previously online. “Wild Things,” a look at the Bronx Zoo that was years in the making, was published this summer in Harper’s and quickly became one of those rare paywalled stories that breaks out on Twitter despite the fact that non-subscribers can’t read it. Enjoy.
Further Reading is a new blog feature in which we take a deeper look at topics from stories featured on Longform. It is produced along with Pitt Writers.
Last week, Longform picked Vanessa Veselka’s “The Truck Stop Killer” about her search for possible connections between her hitchhiking days and a murderer:
If there was any way to connect my story to [Robert Ben] Rhoades, it would be through the body of the girl in the Dumpster. Records on her would provide a date and a place that could then be checked against Rhoades’s trucking logs. To at least one of my questions—was Rhoades my guy?—I’d have a clear answer, a simple yes or no.
Here’s further reading on memory, Veselka, and Rhoades:
Further Reading is a new blog feature in which we take a deeper look at topics from stories featured on Longform. It is produced along withPitt Writers.
Last week, Longform picked a 1994 Harper’s piece by John Seabrook about giant bluefin tuna fishermen who answer the lucrative demands of Japanese sushi markets rather than the conservationists’ concerns about overfishing. Following one giant tuna from a coastal Maine harpoon hunt to its butchering after auction in Japan, Seabrook explores the reasoning behind the dismissal of reports that the fish’s numbers are dangerously dwindling:
I ask Brooks and Steve why they want to catch tuna so much. Steve says, “I love these fish. But I love to catch them. God I love to catch them. And I know you need some kind of catch limits because I’d catch all of them if I could.” He thinks for a minute. “Most guys I know don’t do this for the money. They tell you they do it for the money, but it’s not true.”
Brooks says, “The money is just a way of keeping score. It’s hard to explain what it is. It’s weird. A lot of things come together when you stick a fish.”
Much has happened in the world’s oceans, fishing ports and conservation movements in the 18 years since Seabrook’s article was published. Here’s further reading on the current status of bluefin tuna, the changing fishing industry, sushi’s role in overfishing and how to keep eating (certain) oceanic fare without feeling bad.
Episode 10: Chris Jones (Live in Romania)
Episode 10: Before a live audience in Bucharest hosted by the Romanian magazine Decât o Revistă, Evan Ratliff interviews Chris Jones.
“It just feels good to fucking win… If you want to say ‘Let’s get rid of [journalism awards],’ no problem. But if they exist, I want to win them. Just because I won two—I know Gary Smith has won four. I want five. Unless Gary Smith wins five, and then I want six. That’s just how I work. And maybe that’s a terrible, competitive, creepy thing. But journalism is competitive.”
Show notes and links:
- “The Honor System” (Esquire • Sep 2012)
- “Animals” (Esquire • Mar 2012)
- “The Things That Carried Him” (Esquire • Mar 2008)
- “TV’s Crowning Moment of Awesome” (Esquire • Jul 2010)
- “Roger Ebert: The Essential Man” (Esquire • Mar 2010)
- Jones on Longform
- @mysecondempire
- Decât o Revistă magazine
Further Reading is a new blog feature in which we take a deeper look at topics from stories featured on Longform. It is produced along with Pitt Writers.
Last week, Longform picked a piece from GQ’s Karen Russell on the comeback of Juan Jose Padilla, a Spanish matador left partially blind after being gored through the face by a bull’s horn. Russell explores the cultural tradition of bullfighting and the dangerous glory it promises its toreadors. Some readers, however, found more compassion for bull than fighter:
Here’s some further reading on matadors and the ethical arguments around bullfighting, plus a pair of dispatches from the most famous writer to explore the sport:
Further Reading is a new blog feature in which we take a deeper look at topics from stories featured on Longform. It is produced along with Pitt Writers.
Last week Longform picked a Details piece by Scott Carney on the sometimes-perilous journey of Westerners seeking spirituality in India. Carney tells the stories of several young people, including a 28-year-old named Jonathan Spollen, who have gone missing, lost their minds, or both:
Stories like Spollen’s feel like Eastern versions of Into the Wild, the 1996 book about a young adventurer who died after trying to live off the land in Alaska: They’re tales of willful idealists whose romantic notions of remote lands lead them to embark on quixotic journeys.
In case you missed Into the Wild, Christopher McCandless’s story, here’s Jon Krakauer original article for Outisde: “Death of an Innocent.” And here’s more reading on yogis, meditation, and, of course, the Beatles in India:
September 2012
8 posts
Further Reading is a new blog feature in which we take a deeper look at topics from stories featured on Longform. It is produced along with Pitt Writers.
Last week, Longform picked a piece by Westword’s Alan Prendergast about the 1939 execution of a mentally disabled man coerced into admitting to a crime he didn’t commit. A year after Colorado issued Joe Arridy its first-ever posthumous pardon, Prendergast explores the circumstances leading to the execution and the fight—70 years later—to clear the young man’s name. Suggestions for further reading about coerced confessions, wrongful convictions, the insanity defense and the death penalty:
Episode 7: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Coates, senior editor at The Atlantic and author of The Beautiful Struggle, interviewed by Evan Ratliff.
“I was 24 when my son was born. People always say that kids get in the way, right? But actually it had the opposite effect on me. I feel like I could have spent my twenties doing all sorts of self-destructive things - that was my natural inclination - but having a kid suddenly makes that not OK…. The stakes of everything just went up. I think I’m the type of person where, for any reason, I only respond to pressure. That kid just so raised the pressure, for everything. … So I started writing for the Washington Monthly, and the Monthly pays shit, everybody knows that, right? They were paying ten cents a word at this point. But because they have these big-shots writing for them, nobody ever calls for the check! But I would say, ‘no, I need you to send me that check. Yeah, I know it’s only $150, but I actually need that check, you really need to send that check.’”
Show notes and links:
- Coates’s blog for The Atlantic
- “Fear of a Black President” (The Atlantic • Aug 2012)
- “‘This Is How We Lost to the White Man’” (The Atlantic • May 2008)
- “Confessions of a Black Mr. Mom” (Washington Monthly • March 2002)
- Coates on Longform
Further Reading is a new blog feature in which we take a deeper look at topics from stories featured on Longform. It is produced along with Pitt Writers.
Last week, Longform picked a piece from The Billfold on the crushing burden of student loan debt. The anonymous author, out of equal parts desperation and wanderlust, was driven to a pair of war-torn nations in search of cash. Suggestions for further reading about debt, Kosovo, and Iraq:
Headed to Portland for XOXO Festival? Longform’s Aaron Lammer will be there, too. Come say hi!
Editor’s note: This is the first installment of a new blog feature in which we take a deeper look at topics from stories featured on Longform. It is produced along with Pitt Writers.
Last week Longform picked interviews with a pair of Pulitzer Prize winners, Katherine Boo and Jonathan Gold. Suggestions for further reading:
Katherine Boo covers poverty and social welfare issues in the United States and elsewhere for The New Yorker. Last February marked the release of her first book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, which employs three years of immersive reporting to tell the story of Annawadi, a slum outside of Mumbai, and the lives of its residents. In the interview that made Longform’s picks, Boo talked with Guernica’s Emily Brennan about journalistic ethics, the limits of language, and her approach to judiciously writing about her subjects. Here are some of her earlier pieces, plus an NPR interview about the book.
August 2012
4 posts
Update, Monday 8/27: Testing is now closed. Thanks to everyone who volunteered!
We’ve been hard at work on an update to our iPad app, and it’s almost done. But we need to make sure every last kink has been worked out.
If you have an iPad and some free time this weekend, we’re looking for a small group of volunteers to test a private beta version of the update. You’ll have our eternal thanks…and a free story from our friends at The Atavist.
SO DAVID GRANN IS ON THE PODCAST THIS WEEK AND WE’RE A LITTLE EXCITED.
Episode 3: David Grann
David Grann, staff writer at The New Yorker, talks with Max Linsky.
“You don’t always know all the answers. I think that’s what kinda makes life interesting. The thing that makes these stories real, while they are in some ways unfathomable, [is that] there’s an uneasiness of certitude. Because there are things that are not always known, there are elements of doubt, and that can be very haunting…In some of the stories, you get as close as you can to all you know—and then there are parts that elude you.”
Show notes and links:
- “The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon” (Amazon)
- “Crimetown, U.S.A.” (The New Republic • July 2000)
- “The Yankee Comandante” (New Yorker • May 2012)
- “The Squid Hunter” (New Yorker • May 2004)
- “Trial By Fire” (New Yorker • Sep 2009)
- “The Chameleon” (New Yorker • Aug 2008)
- davidgrann.com
- @davidgrann
- Grann on Longform
Episode 2: Janet Reitman
Rolling Stone contributing editor and Inside Scientology author Janet Reitman talks with Aaron Lammer.
“I’m very open about the fact that I know nothing…. Every reporter should admit you know nothing, and when you do, there will be people that will take pity on you, and try to teach you. And then you have to be shrewd enough to know who’s spinning you, and who is being genuine.”
Show notes and links:
- “Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion” (Amazon)
- “Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: Inside Dartmouth’s Hazing Abuses” (Rolling Stone • Mar 2012)
- “Sex and Scandal at Duke” (Rolling Stone • June 2006)
- “Baghdad Follies” (Rolling Stone • July 2004)
- janetreitman.com
- @janetreitman
- Reitman on Longform
We launched a podcast today with the good folks from The Atavist.
Episode 1: Matthieu Aikins
On the eve a move to Kabul, Aikins talks with Evan Ratliff about reporting from war zones:
“There’s no real objective framework for deciding what the value of your life is, versus the value of a story…. Especially when you go to places where people are getting killed for the silliest reasons, and a life is worth so little, you realize you don’t necessarily have to value yourself as this, like, precious commodity that can’t be risked in any way. And that’s just a personal choice, and it’s actually a very selfish one, because obviously, if you have loved ones, you’re affecting them by making that choice. In any case, it’s just a different headspace that you inhabit.”
Show notes and links:
- “The Master of Spin Boldak” (Harper’s • Dec 2009)
- “The Siege of September 13” (GQ • Mar 2012)
- “Our Man in Kandahar” (The Atlantic • Nov 2011)
- maikins.com
- @mattaikins
- Matthieu Aikins on Longform
July 2012
4 posts
Contributing editors Elon Green and Gretchen Gavett, both of whom are more than a little excited for the Summer Games in London, have pulled together 10 great stories about the Olympics, spanning history, scandal and science … and what it’s like to drink with gymnastics coach Béla Károlyi. Should be more than enough to tide you over before the Games get started.
-
The Little-Known History of How the Olympics Got Their Start Frank Deford • Smithsonian • Jul 2012
The first modern games were staged in 1850 by a surgeon named William Penny Brookes in a town called Much Wenlock.
-
High Hurdles and White Gloves Thomas P. Curtis • The Atlantic • Dec 1956
An American gold medalist in the hurdles describes his experience at the 1896 Olympics in Athens.
-
Letter From Munich E.J. Kahn • New Yorker • Sep 1972
On the scene of the darkest games in Olympic history.
-
The Search for Nadia Bob Ottum • Sports Illustrated • Nov 1979
Three years after her gold-medal performance—and amidst rumors of a fall from grace—the author travels to Transylvania to track down gymnast Nadia Comaneci. He also enjoys several drinks with her coach, Béla Károlyi.
-
The Greatest Game Nobody Ever Saw Jack McCallum • Sports Illustrated • Jul 2012
On the eve of the 1992 Summer Olympics, the Dream Team held a closed-door scrimmage in Monaco. Michael Jordan led one team, Magic Johnson the other. Two decades later, a game report.
-
The Ballad of Richard Jewell Marie Brenner • Vanity Fair • Feb 1997
How the media and law enforcement fingered the wrong man for the 1996 Olympic Park bombing.
-
Ben Still Needs to Run Mark Kram • Outside • May 2004
More than 15 years after he was stripped of a gold medal, sprinter Ben Johnson attempts a comeback.
-
Will You Still Medal in the Morning? Sam Alipour • ESPN • Jul 2012
Sex in the Olympic Village.
-
One One-Hundredth of a Second Faster Mark McClusky • Wired • Jun 2012
How science is “helping athletes approach perfection.”
-
The Living Nightmare Barry Bearak • New York Times • Feb 2012
Quanitta Underwood, who was sexually abused by her father as a child, is now a contender for the gold medal in boxing.
A brief announcement: starting today, Longform.org is sponsored by the generous folks at the University of Pittsburgh. Specifically, the site is now aligned with Pitt’s writing program, one of the nation’s finest.
We’re thrilled for Longform to join such good company. Michael Chabon and Rebecca Skloot are among the program’s many esteemed graduates, and Pitt Writers is headed up by one of our all-time favorite longform journalists, Jeanne Marie Laskas. We couldn’t be more excited.
You can learn more about the program on the Pitt Writers website, and be sure to check out some of the students’ work in the latest issue of Hot Metal Bridge.
June 2012
9 posts
Today is an exciting day for Longform—we’re very proud to republish this epic piece by Tom French, available on a reader-friendly single page for the first time. Serialized over two months in the (then) St. Petersburg Times in 1997, “Angels & Demons” won a Pulitzer and set a new bar for the kind of narrative work newspapers could publish.
It’s an honor, Mr. French. Thank you.
“Nobody will deny that Flipboard is a beautiful product, but the question is, is it too beautiful?” the executive said. “What people want out of a magazine is exactly what they’re delivering. So if people feel like they’re getting that already, even if it’s not the same depth of content that would be in a print or monthly publication, then are they less likely to want to find it in the magazine itself?”
The New York Times is dealing with that challenge this Thursday, when it plans to begin posting its full content on Flipboard — but only for users who also prove they are paid Times subscribers. Magazines could consider adopting a similar model, but for now they are looking to ad revenue to make the content giveaway worth it.
A new collection of stories, selected by Gretchen Gavett, at Slate.
From Joe Paterno to coal miners, the rodeo to fruit pickers, our story picks by theGQ correspondent.
Today’s a big day. We’re thrilled to announce two things we’ve been working on for quite some time - Library and Send to Readmill. Both features make getting books into Readmill easier than it’s ever been, and will be a welcomed addition for any of you who regularly buy from independent stores….
We are proud to announce a new destination for the eBooks you’ve created using Readlists.
Starting today, you’ll find an option to Send to Readmill under Export on all readlists. This is part of Readmill’s new feature, which you can read more about here.
Readmill is a fantastic…
Without a doubt, the most important thing about a reading app is that it delivers content that is worth reading. Currently providing content from more than 25 websites, the articles that it provides are varied, and there is something for everyone. In other apps, I’ve had a problem because the feeds are always full of articles that aren’t worth reading. In this, I haven’t found that, as it really has only provided the things that are worth reading. Each one is informative, interesting and usually something that I would recommend to others. It aims to make great, meaningful articles easy to find, without having to search for hours, and it certainly delivers that.
GOOD’s editorial team, minus our far-flung editor Nona Willis Aronowitz and our education editor Liz Dwyer, moments after finding out many of us would be fired in the morning“What is best in life?” This is our colleague Cord Jefferson’s refrain. This brilliant little rhetorical question…
May 2012
24 posts
Oops, we got our lines crossed up and started sending articles here. You can get a Tumblr article stream at http://longform.tumblr.com
Really great long conversation between Xconomy’s Wade Roush and Pocket’s Nate Weiner.
The idea is simple. You take a group of links—articles, recipes, course materials, whatever—and Readlists bundles them into an e-book that you can send directly to your Kindle, iPad, or iPhone. Every Readlist is shareable on the web. You can even embed Readlists into your own blog or site, the same way you would a Youtube video.
The quickest description? Readlists are mixtapes for reading.
We’ve been playing with the tool for weeks, and it’s incredibly easy and fun to use. Check it out at Readlists.com.
An editor’s pick bonanza, including Grann’s latest, “The Yankee Comandant,” which came out today.
Another exciting day for the Longform iPad app: two fantastic, and very different, sites have joined our roster of magazines. Los Angeles Review of Books—one of the most exciting, ambitious publications to launch in the last few years—turns out several lengthy pieces every week from some of the country’s best writers. A few recent favorites: Hua Hsu’s history of office chairs, and this free-ranging conversation between music writers Simon Reynolds and Greil Marcus.
Also new in the app today is a feed from Counterparties, the curatorial project from Reuters’ Felix Salmon. Counterparties is a little different than most of the feeds in the app, instead of focusing on a single publication, Salmon uses a tool called Percolate (which was created by Longform friend Noah Brier) to curate the best reading on business and the economy from across the web. By adding Counterparties, you’ll get all the long features from amongst Salmon’s picks, an ever-updating window on the world’s economies that we’ve been really enjoying using internally for the last weeks.
Longform for iPad is available on the App Store.
A collection of picks from contributing editor Jody Avirgan, a self-described “sucker for commencement speeches.”
Our latest for Slate.
We’re thrilled to announce that, starting today, you can read all of the latest features from the great Outside Magazine in Longform for iPad. The magazine has been publishing top-shelf narrative non-fiction for 25 years—its archive is one of the deepest on Longform.org—and has turned out some amazing work lately. Three highly recommended pieces you’ll now find in the app: “Why Noah Went Into the Woods,” “Insane in the Membrane,” and “Open Your Mouth and You’re Dead.”
Longform for iPad is available on the App Store.
