Mark Obbie's Blog, page 14
November 5, 2014
Nov. 4 a milestone on the crime-victim timeline
Yesterday’s election returns will figure prominently in two of the stories I plan to include in my upcoming series on crime victims and their stake in criminal-justice reform. First, relevant to my look at the shifting politics of the reform movement, what will a Republican-controlled Senate mean for bills like the Smarter Sentencing Act? Republicans have taken lead roles in […]
November 3, 2014
On the nightstand: Monday, 11/3/14
Today’s good reads in criminal-justice journalism, with an emphasis on longform narrative stories and original reporting about crime victims and reforms in sentencing and prisons: Stephanie McCrummen has written a profoundly moving tribute to a victim of violence, a father attacked by his mentally ill son who’s now left to ponder what he might have done differently. […]
October 31, 2014
On the nightstand: Friday, 10/31/14
Today’s good reads in criminal-justice journalism, with an emphasis on longform narrative stories and original reporting about crime victims and reforms in sentencing and prisons: Sari Horwitz looks at crime in the fracking fields (the “dark side of the boom” in the Bakken oil play) through the experience of Dawn White, a tribal police officer fighting […]
October 29, 2014
Kinship with the broken people
On my reporting trip to Los Angeles last month, one of the remarkable activists I met is Father Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries (I mentioned it briefly here, among my posts when I was on the road). In my upcoming series of stories on crime victims and criminal-justice reform, I’ll include the story of […]
October 28, 2014
On the nightstand: Tuesday, 10/28/14
Today’s good reads in criminal-justice journalism, with an emphasis on longform narrative stories and original reporting about crime victims and reforms in sentencing and prisons: Joshua Davis and David Wolman wrote the hell out of their story about a Venetian burglar’s heist of a famous painting in a tangled plot with a mobster. Some of my […]
October 27, 2014
War on press in Ferguson
It’s unlikely this new report on police harassment of journalists at the Ferguson, Missouri, protests will generate much sympathy from the public. And that’s a shame, considering that anyone seeking a fact-based discussion about Michael Brown’s death and the aftermath depends on the work of those journalists. But, at the very least, I hope its findings […]
October 24, 2014
On the nightstand: Friday, 10/24/14
Today’s good reads in criminal-justice journalism, with an emphasis on longform narrative stories and original reporting about crime victims and reforms in sentencing and prisons: Hanna Rosin, in a deconstruction of The American Life’s Serial podcast, calls the true-crime narrative now in its fourth week a potentially “truly radical” crime reporting form that is audio’s “New […]
October 23, 2014
On the nightstand: Thursday, 10/23/14
Today’s good reads in criminal-justice journalism, with an emphasis on longform narrative stories and original reporting about crime victims and reforms in sentencing and prisons: Jerry Adler profiles Max Kenner, the prison education innovator whose program in New York prisons for Bard College has gained national visibility. The numbers of its graduates are small, relative to […]
October 20, 2014
Project update: Off to NYC
Time for another reporting trip, this time to New York City. And there’s a story behind that. Last January, I was in New York as a finalist for a Soros Justice Fellowship. The morning of my final interview by the selection committee, I was reading news online and discovered that one of my planned stories in […]
On the nightstand: Monday, 10/20/14
Today’s good reads in criminal-justice journalism, with an emphasis on longform narrative stories and original reporting about crime victims and reforms in sentencing and prisons: Mike Kessler explains in a long, compelling narrative how abused children are at the root of the sex trade: as sexual abuse victims who then get trafficked by pimps, leading often to […]
