Mark Obbie's Blog, page 37

Rich multimedia makes this story

I read The New York Times six days a week in digital form only, on my computer browser or apps for my iPhone and Kindle Fire. I get the print edition delivered on Sundays, out of respect for tradition; because it’s … Continue reading →

Faith on trial

As I know from my own work on God’s Nobodies, writing a story that examines fringe religious beliefs blamed for a family tragedy is tricky. But, in this November story in Philadelphia magazine (which I belatedly discovered, thanks to a friend … Continue reading →

Pot economy’s founding father

The longer I work as a journalist, the more I appreciate complexity and ambiguity in stories. Life, as it turns out, is complicated. So is public policy, no matter how simplistic it may sound when advocates of one sort or … Continue reading →

Where’s a legal-reporting encyclopedia?

After I tweeted about this helpful article by Slate’s Justin Peters, in which he continued his admirable crusade against treating children’s shooting deaths as unavoidable accidents, I kept thinking about the resource Peters created on the fly — and wondered why there … Continue reading →

Crime journalism: one blog’s cure

In a thoughtful post on a respected criminal-justice blog, Grits for Breakfast, Scott Henson laments a set of problems I harp on often as well: how the media treat crime as entertainment and how they can distort the realities of … Continue reading →

On the Karlsen murder beat

Here’s a vivid illustration of why local newspapers and experienced reporters really matter. In a just-concluded murder prosecution in Seneca County, N.Y., the nearest decent-sized daily, Advance’s Syracuse Post-Standard, made a significant commitment to covering — and breaking — every … Continue reading →

Two families, two endings

Last night I attended a talk in Rochester by author John Schwartz on his book Oddly Normal, a memoir about a gay son’s journey to self-acceptance. As I pointed out in this post last year, Schwartz’s story serves as a hopeful … Continue reading →

At 11 months, snapshots of pain

Sixty-three thousand seven hundred and eighty teddy bears. That detail — one of many about donations to flood Newtown, Connecticut, in the months since its tragedy last December — jumps out of the lede of Lisa Miller’s feature on the … Continue reading →

Brothers for all time

As a young cops and courts reporter in Houston, I rolled my eyes every time one of my editors suggested sources for my stories. No matter the topic, if it had anything at all to do with law — and … Continue reading →

A declaration against independence

Any self-respecting journalist who writes about the law — especially those who try to shed meaningful light on the role of judges — should view with alarm yesterday’s Second Circuit decision stripping U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin of her role in the … Continue reading →