Mark Obbie's Blog, page 15
October 19, 2014
Just ego?
The big event in criminal-justice literature right now is the impending publication of Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. The author, a crusading advocate and leader of Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative, already plugged his book on The Daily Show, an early indication of how much attention we can expect from his memoir […]
October 18, 2014
On the nightstand: Saturday, 10/18/14
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: Craig Malisow revisits the Houston serial-murder spree of Dean Corll and Wayne Henley through the eyes of a woman who witnessed their final act. The rest of her life has been […]
October 16, 2014
On the nightstand: Thursday, 10/16/14
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: Tanya Erzen paints a startling portrait of Louisiana’s faith-based education system in its toughest prisons. A program that arguably discourages prison violence and gives inmates a constructive outlet also appears to […]
Fight coverage ignores key facts
This New York Times story about the controversy at Harvard over its new sexual-misconduct policy illustrates everything that’s wrong about fights involving crime victims and legal policy. The story concerns a protest by Harvard law professors over the university’s new policy. The professors complain that the policy denies “the most basic elements of fairness and due […]
October 15, 2014
Project update: hours of audio
It’s been a little over a month since I last posted about my work in progress on my Soros Media Fellowship project, a series on crime victims. I had hoped by now that the first installment would have been published by Slate, but first I missed my self-imposed deadline and then changes at Slate delayed […]
October 14, 2014
On the nightstand: Tuesday, 10/14/14
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: Daniel Alarcón’s gripping narrative, “The Contestant,” takes us inside Peru’s seamy reality-TV industry, where a family becomes a tool for an exploitative show. After sparking a retaliatory murder, the show and its […]
October 9, 2014
Stories, justice, and subtlety
This new feature at The Intercept by Liliana Segura is one of those stories that resonates deeply without clobbering the reader over the head with an explicit Big Idea. There’s no nut graf, no polemics, just a pure, sad narrative. It’s the story of two exonerees, William Lopez and Jeff Deskovic. Last February, The New […]
October 8, 2014
On the nightstand: Wednesday, 10/8/14
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: Andrea Jones starts her feature story in policy-wonk mode, describing the debate over sentencing reform and the criticisms of mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug crimes. But her story shifts into high […]
October 7, 2014
On the nightstand: Tuesday, 10/7/14
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: Dax Devlon-Ross’ long narrative on a North Carolina murder case explores racial bias in jury selection. The story focuses on how a state law and a sympathetic judge forced officials to […]
October 6, 2014
Right kind of buzz
Critics often lump in BuzzFeed with other clickbait content mills: purveyors of recycled junk-food posts that feed off others’ original reporting. So it’s especially gratifying to see a piece of work as ambitious and righteous as Alex Campbell’s long feature on women serving lengthy prison terms for their abusive male partners’ crimes against their children. […]
