Mark Obbie's Blog, page 29
May 5, 2014
Shakespeare in supermax
Paying to educate prisoners never fails to rile tough-on-crime advocates. Witness the recent flareup in New York. Gov. Andrew Cuomo quickly dropped his plan to pay for college classes behind bars in the face of public outrage over favoring miscreants with a freebie that law-abiding youth cannot enjoy. Never mind the evidence that education reduces recidivism, […]
May 4, 2014
On the nightstand: Sunday, 5/4
Today’s good reads and reporting coups in criminal-justice journalism: Sunday’s New York Times was particularly victim-friendly, with these three notable pieces: A front-pager by Richard Pérez-Peña and Kate Taylor on the tactics students are using to pressure universities to take their rape complaints more seriously. Their most effective leverage: universities’ hyper-sensitivity about their own reputations, especially […]
May 2, 2014
On the nightstand: Friday, 5/2
Today’s good reads and reporting coups in criminal-justice journalism: An obit by Robert D. McFadden in The New York Times tells the story of a remarkable (and remarkably violent) life. Walter Walsh lived to 106, a remnant of the wild shootouts and derring-do of the FBI’s gangland wars . In the category of WHAT??? news, a […]
Ellies (and almost-Ellies) for crime narratives
Last night’s National Magazine Awards — the magazine equivalent of the Pulitzers, and nicknamed the Ellies — cover the usual range of magazine topics. But the winners list is notably thin on what we care about on this blog: true-crime narrative and criminal justice stories. The one winner, though, is in the category that really matters […]
May 1, 2014
On the nightstand: Thursday, 5/1
Today’s good reads and reporting coups in criminal-justice journalism: IRE’s roundup of coverage of the aftermath of what forever will be known as Oklahoma’s botched execution includes a number of local as well as national reports. More on the Oklahoma execution debacle: Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick gives a capsule history of the case and then analyzes […]
Ode to a daring team, and a dying art
Just as I was finishing reading my copy of a great, new book on an impressive feat of police reporting, the news broke in Philadelphia: no criminal charges will be filed by state or federal authorities against the police officers whose exploits were at the center of the book and a newspaper series that preceded […]
April 30, 2014
On the nightstand: Wednesday, 4/30
Today’s good reads and reporting coups in criminal-justice journalism: Amid the flood of reactions to the botched execution in Oklahoma, Andrew Cohen’s analysis for The Atlantic stands out to me as reasoned and clear-eyed, not to mention passionate. To paraphrase: Even supporters of the death penalty — generally, and in this horrific case in particular — […]
April 29, 2014
On the nightstand: Tuesday, 4/29
Here’s something new for this blog: links to notable, new criminal-justice narratives and news (with the occasional general-journalism stuff thrown in for good measure). These almost-daily “nightstand reading” collections of links repackage what I’ve tweeted and retweeted throughout the day, and are meant for those blog followers who don’t follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or […]
April 28, 2014
An inside job
There are two places in the standard magazine narrative structure where the writer’s main point should be stated most clearly: the nut, or billboard graf, which forms a bridge between the introduction and the rest of the story by hinting at what’s to come and why it matters; and the ending, where all the evidence leads to […]
April 27, 2014
Review roundup
Recent reviews and stories about notable journalistic narratives about crime and justice: In USA Today, reviewer Bob Minzesheimer (my first journalism teacher!) tells the story of how Tony Dokoupil came to write about his father, a marijuana smuggler, in a larger context about drugs, crime, money, and outlaw culture. Dokoupil’s book, The Last Pirate: A Father, […]
