Mark Obbie's Blog, page 19
September 2, 2014
On the nightstand: Monday, 9/2/14
Today’s good reads in criminal-justice journalism, with an emphasis on longform narrative stories on crime and original reporting on crime victims and reforms in sentencing and prisons: Ian Frazier shows what a long narrative can do to transform a well-worn topic (in this case, talk about abuse of painkillers and heroin and overdoses) into something compelling, […]
August 31, 2014
Watching the detectives
I’ve tweeted a number of crime stories published by Narratively (they’ve shown up in my “criminal-justice nightstand reading” posts and are archived here). But the latest, by Ben Greenberg, warrants more than a tweet. In “A Deep South Cold Case Goes Frigid,” Greenberg walks us through his seven-year reporting effort to find answers about one […]
August 28, 2014
On the nightstand: 8/28/14
Today’s good reads in criminal-justice journalism, with an emphasis on longform narrative stories on crime and original reporting on crime victims and reforms in sentencing and prisons: Carla Murphy and Mary Kuhlman produced an audio report on a survivors’ group in Chicago, Citizens for Change, that works to help victims through crime prevention and trauma recovery, […]
Viewed through a straw, with distortions
That will teach me to skip The New York Times‘ normally fatuous Styles section. Nick Bilton, in his new technology-culture column “Disruptions” for Styles (he recently jumped there from the Times‘ Bits blog on the business desk), wrote a fascinating account of how the celebrated citizen journalists on Twitter mangled, either intentionally and not, the news they […]
August 26, 2014
On the nightstand: 8/26/14
Today’s good reads in criminal-justice journalism, with an emphasis on longform narrative stories on crime and original reporting on crime victims and reforms in sentencing and prisons: Hannah Rappleye and Lisa Riordan Seville do a Q&A with Colorlines writer Carla Murphy about her important work questioning why certain crime victims — namely, young black men […]
What reporters do
The reaction to John Eligon’s story yesterday on the front page of The New York Times shows one truth, at least: Critics don’t need to read an entire story, nor do they need to think much about what that story contributes to a larger conversation about an incident as heavily analyzed as the death of […]
August 21, 2014
On the nightstand: Thursday, 8/21/14
Today’s good reads in criminal-justice journalism, with an emphasis on longform narrative stories on crime and original reporting on crime victims and reforms in sentencing and prisons: Pamela Colloff does it again. A writer I’ve often praised has a new feature in which she skillfully and movingly tells the story of Michelle Lyons. As a reporter and then […]
August 20, 2014
A tour de force
“Till Death Do Us Part,” the Charleston, South Carolina, Post and Courier‘s breathtaking, new series on domestic abuse, marks another triumph of the collaborative efforts led by the Center for Investigative Reporting. Before I wade into those details, first things first. To use an abstraction like “domestic abuse” is a disservice to the crystal clarity […]
August 19, 2014
On the nightstand: 8/19/14
Today’s good reads in criminal-justice journalism, with an emphasis on longform narrative stories on crime and original reporting on crime victims and reforms in sentencing and prisons: Tracey Kaplan and Mark Emmons profile Dionne Wilson, the public face of the campaign in California to treat certain crimes less harshly under the law. Wilson’s journey from […]
August 17, 2014
On the nightstand: 8/17/14
Today’s good reads in criminal-justice journalism, with an emphasis on longform narrative stories on crime and original reporting on crime victims and reforms in sentencing and prisons: Dave Tobin makes the point in his story about the abduction of two northern New York Amish girls that local police cultivated good relationships across cultures, which helped […]
