Mark Obbie's Blog, page 31

All in the cards

When Ezra Klein’s new project, now called Vox, first came into focus two months ago after his departure from the Washington Post, I couldn’t help but gush about the ideas I was hearing — ideas that promise a deeper, richer, smarter journalism on matters of public policy. Now that the site has launched and can […]

The resilience myth

As I made clear in this post last month, I’m a fan of Susan Zalkind’s reporting and storytelling about the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings. I remain a fan, based on this new Washington Post piece of hers on myths surrounding the case — with one exception: her casual misunderstanding of what victims often need to […]

The 21st century pillory

The mugshot-scam stories I blogged about in the past exposed an extortion racket that’s as cruel as it is unfair: Sites harvest suspects’ mugshots, publish them online, and then demand money to remove them — even though it’s practically impossible to wipe the image from every site and every search result once competing sites copy images from […]

Reasoning with doubt

Now that Michael Hall’s Texas Monthly serial The Murders at the Lake has concluded with part 5, let’s ponder this: Why should readers outside of Texas care enough about a 34-year-old triple murder to read 25,000 words reexamining a case that already has been meticulously documented over the years? What’s the point? If I asked […]

A man-to-man talk

One of my favorite moments each year, when I was on a team teaching reporting to grad students at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School, was the guest lecture by a local columnist, Sean Kirst. In his gravelly honk of a voice, Kirst played the tough guy. But his message, like his masterful reporting and writing, always […]

An investment in quality

I just got around to reading David Cay Johnston’s piece in the latest Columbia Journalism Review, which makes the same point I made in this post last October, except with considerably more reporting and thought. The topic: how Gannett has syndicated USA Today in its regional newspapers, deepening those newspapers’ national and international content while […]

Return to Lake Waco

I’ve read a ridiculous number of true-crime books and magazine stories. Many, while engaging at the time I read them, fade from memory fairly quickly. One of the exceptions was Careless Whispers, by the Texas journalist Carlton Stowers, about a triple murder in 1982 of three high school students at Lake Waco. It stands out […]

Crowdfunding a prison series

Shane Bauer, whose fine work in writing about solitary confinement I praised here, has embarked on a new venture: a year-long reporting effort aimed at American prisons, but only if he receives $75,000 in readers’ pledges through Beacon, a months-old crowdfunding site for journalists. A pledge of at least $5 per month unlocks not only […]

Mea culpa, Heath and USAT

Last week, while at the same time praising Brad Heath and company, I gave them the back of my hand for an ambitious and damning USA Today package on criminal fugitives that I said showed the extent of a problem without providing solutions. What I didn’t anticipate was the reaction the stories would provoke among […]

Memoir, with reporting

Memoir is such an overused device. People call themselves journalists simply for regaling us with tales from their ordinary lives. It’s so much easier to write a first-person essay than to do real reporting. And so much more ego-gratifying to place ourselves at the center of the action, even when we would do better to […]