Mark Obbie's Blog, page 12
December 7, 2014
On the nightstand: Sunday, 12/7/14
Recent good reads in criminal-justice journalism, with an emphasis on longform narrative stories and original reporting about crime, crime victims, and reforms in sentencing and prisons: Kyle Swenson revisits a wrongful-conviction story he told in 2011. Though that story seemed to make no difference at first, three years later it contributed greatly to the unraveling of […]
Crime and justice in the NYT top 100 books
Tis the season to make lists, and lists of lists. I like to scan “best” reading lists for books and articles I may have overlooked during the year. In that spirit, I’ll cull from various lists the quality nonfiction crime and criminal-justice narratives that appear. Today’s list: The New York Times‘ “100 Notable Books of […]
December 6, 2014
Why we tell victims’ stories
In her smart, informed take on the latest in Rolling Stone‘s shameful University of Virginia rape-story scandal (which I blogged about here and here), Hanna Rosin at Slate writes about the relationship between “Jackie” and RS writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely, and about crime victims and journalists generally: Jackie told the Washington Post that she felt “manipulated” by […]
December 5, 2014
The case of the victimless shooting
At the blog of Open Society Foundations, the parent organization of the Soros Justice Fellowship program that supports my yearlong reporting project on crime victims, I posted this short essay. It’s meant to provide one more perspective on the recent grand jury decision to no-bill a New York police officer in the death of Eric Garner: a […]
Journalism and victims take a hit
Now that Rolling Stone‘s UVA rape story has started to circle the drain, as reported in this Washington Post story by T. Rees Shapiro, we can see the worst-case byproduct of the reporting lapses I wrote about here. As journalists, we’re apt to focus on the reputation of the writer, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, and the […]
December 3, 2014
On the nightstand: Wednesday, 12/3/14
Recent good reads in criminal-justice journalism, with an emphasis on longform narrative stories and original reporting about crime, crime victims, and reforms in sentencing and prisons: Erin Siegal McIntyre, author of a book on one cross-border adoption dispute, investigates another in a heavily reported, finely written narrative. This one involves a child and two sets of […]
December 2, 2014
Basic fairness neglected
In the nearly two weeks since Rolling Stone published Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s explosive UVA rape story and people like me gushed about its journalistic power, the reaction has gone from outrage to skepticism fairly quickly. Even as the university continues ramping up its response to show that it’s Doing Something, critics have pounced on a glaring weakness […]
December 1, 2014
On the nightstand: Monday, 12/1/14
Recent good reads in criminal-justice journalism, with an emphasis on longform narrative stories and original reporting about crime, crime victims, and reforms in sentencing and prisons: Michael J. Mooney continues his string of powerful stories with the story of a hapless husband, Frank Howard, who had more money than sense or morals in the plot to […]
November 29, 2014
On the nightstand: Saturday, 11/29/14
Recent good reads in criminal-justice journalism, with an emphasis on longform narrative stories and original reporting about crime, crime victims, and reforms in sentencing and prisons: Robert Draper’s cover story covers familiar ground but in a new and powerful way. In his examination of rape in the military and a victim-blaming culture resistant to change, Draper […]
November 26, 2014
On the nightstand: Wednesday, 11/26/14
Recent good reads in criminal-justice journalism, with an emphasis on longform narrative stories and original reporting about crime, crime victims, and reforms in sentencing and prisons: Simone Weichselbaum reports from Cincinnati on whether a model of repaired police-community relations is all it’s cracked up to be. The verdict (not quite) is made more interesting by the […]
